THE PROBLEM 



must admit that God helps those most who 

 also help themselves. 



These are not merely academic ques- 

 tions to be debated in the schools with 

 acute dialectic. They have assumed an in- 

 tensely practical aspect. Especially dur- 

 ing and since the Great War, when human 

 life was cheap, when conventional codes 

 of personal and social ethics were neces- 

 sarilv modified, when the courses of our 

 lives were evidently so largely determined 

 by forces quite beyond our control, have 

 our traditional standards of personal re- 

 sponsibility for conduct been greatly al- 

 tered. This widespread change has come 

 about unwittingly, not by deliberate pur- 

 pose. It has, however, been fostered by 

 scientific and pseudoscientific propaganda 

 and especially by appeals to biological 

 laws. And now the procedure of our law 

 courts, our medical practice, our admin- 

 istration of public and private philan- 

 thropy and our personal conduct are pro- 

 foundly influenced by the growing belief 

 that the human individual is only a bit 

 of froth floating passively on the stream 

 of circumstance. 



Must we rest content with this, the old- 

 est and the simplest of all philosophies 



[17] 



