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General ethics --- Social problems --- ethiek

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"This book is for those who know something of the new work in social welfare, and for those who do not. It aims to raise the heart temperature of both classes, to give to the one a philosophy, a background for its work, and to the other a vision of this work's satisfaction. The ideas it contains are iterated and reiterated from many standpoints--its chapter headings but express the emphasis of the moment. And this plan is deliberate. There are, as it seems to me, underlying the problems presented, but a few fundamental concepts, and my endeavor has been to demonstrate these. Turning our acts round and viewing their varying facets, we find that seeming contradictions disappear. The complexities of life we discover to be born of our own limitations. They arise from our lack of knowledge of nature's laws; they become progressively simplified as we learn. Science groped for years, bewildered by the detail which confronted it, and then discovered that underlying all the apparent confusion there were but just a few elemental principles. It will be the same with the study of human conduct. Where once we could not see the wood for the trees, there will eventually become possible a noteworthy forestry. With understanding there will come the power of prophecy and guidance. The true student of social affairs is not inventing, he is just discovering. He is bringing no new facts into the world, he is merely beginning to use somewhat those he already had. He is beginning to appreciate what through the ages the poets and wise men have always felt--but he is, too, getting behind the feelings of these seers and is proposing to use the truths he finds there to advance the general happiness. That man is a creature of circumstance is a bit of crystallized wisdom far too valuable to be left a mere pretty saying. I have used it here as my working hypothesis, a frank determinism, that principle upon which all modem social work is truly based whatever may be the old beliefs still held by social workers. And my plan is to seek for the normal in man. It is, I believe, only through this that we can guide him. So long as we concentrate on the abnormal symptoms which present, whether we regard these as obsessions or as mental deformations, we remain baffled and helpless. It is as with the insane. These last treated with chains and whips were only made worse. Not until the psychiatrists learned to penetrate through the symptoms to the normal which lay behind did they begin to effect cures. We must do the same with those who have gone socially wrong. We must recognize that these too, no matter how monstrous their acts, possess normal remnants, and that it is with these remnants our hope lies. After all, may it not be that abnormality is just a term for what is unexpected and not understood? Such a thought will open our eyes. We shall then be able to seek calmly for the causes of unusual behavior. And this search will be well rewarded--it will give to our social work a real economic value, and also a new joy, the joy of successful endeavor"--Preface. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).

Social problems. --- Social service. --- Social psychology.

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Christian moral theology --- Social problems --- Sociology of the family. Sociology of sexuality

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Social psychology. --- Civilization --- Social problems. --- Psychologie sociale --- Civilisation --- Problèmes sociaux --- History. --- Histoire