See now, in summary, how modest a suggestion
it is, grandiloquent though it may have seemed.
We propose no 'ism, we make no programme; we
suggest, tentatively, a method. We propose a
new start, a new tack, a new approach, -- not to
the exclusion of other approaches, but to their
assistance. If this thing should be done, it would
not mean that other gropers toward a better
world would have to stand idle; it would but
give light to them that walk in darkness. And
it would make possible a more generous coöpera-
tion among the different currents in the stream
of reconstructive thought.

We are a little discouraged to-day; we lovers
of the new have become doubtful of the object
of our love. Perhaps -- we sometimes feel -- all
this effort is a vain circling in the mist; perhaps
we do not advance, but only move. Our faith
in progress is dimmed. We even tire of the
"social problem"; we have tried so many ways,
knocked at so many doors, and found so little
of that which we sought. Sometimes, in the las-
situde of mistaken effort and drear defeat, we
almost think that the social problem is never to
find even partial solution, that it is not a problem

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