TKESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. ()'") 



is a proposition which only needs to be understood to be uni- 

 versally admitted. The tendency of the scientific mind to 

 apply to social phenomena the canons that prevail in the non- 

 intelligent world, is at least as ancient as the French physio- 

 crats, Adam Smith, Ricardo, and Malthus, and it has been 

 strengthened since Darwin by the writings of some of the 

 ablest social philosophers. It rests on the seductive idea that 

 what nature does must be well done, and that nature's methods 

 must be the best methods for man to adopt. I have hitherto 

 designated this kind of philosophy as a sort of nature-w^orship, 

 and shown that the entire fabric of reasoning crumbles away 

 at the first touch of critical analysis. But it is a fascinating 

 habit of thought and difficult to dislodge from a certain tN'pe 

 of mind. 



Now on examining the practical applications which the Neo- 

 Darwinians make of their underlj-ing conception, I find them 

 to be strikingly in line with those last described. If nothing 

 that the individual gains b}- the most heroic or the most assid- 

 uous effort can by any possibility be handed on to posterity, 

 the incentive to effort is in great part removed. If all the 

 labor bestowed upon the youth of the race to secure a perfect 

 physical and intellectual development dies with the individual 

 to whom it is imparted why this labor ? If, as Mr. Galton puts 

 it, nurture is nothing and nature is everj-thing, wh}- not aban- 

 don nurture and leave the race wholly to nature ? In fact the 

 whole burden of the Neo-Darwinian song is : Cease to educate, 

 it is mere temporizing with the deeper and unchangeable 

 forces of nature. And we are thrown back upon the theories 

 of Rousseau, who would abandon the race entirely to the feral 

 influences of nature. 



The great men who talk this way, trained in the methods 

 of the university, their minds stored with the fundamental, 



