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the least net expense of communal resources, hence it must 
adequately nourish them, and convert the resultant energy into 
work to replace as far as possible that dissipated in their support. 
But if the community cannot afford to lose the work the poor 
man produces while communally supported, it can_ still 
less afford to lose his permanent capacity for doing work, 
and if that capacity be suffering through physical, mental 
or moral disease, the community is bound alike in wisdom 
and in mercy to administer relief in such forms as will tend to 
remove the disease and not the symptom, viz., poverty. 
Experience in all forms of evolution had shown that exercise was 
essential to avoid degradation of a function, and also conscious 
effort to secure the healthy maintenance of these functions, e.g., 
capacity for work and right living which involved mental and 
moral qualities ; and the withdrawal of the stimulus to such effort 
would degrade the population, or render some permanent cripples. 
The state, therefore, must encourage its churches, clubs, circles of 
friends, families (organs of the whole community and subject to 
the same Jaws as control all other life) to exercise all these 
functions, on the constant use of which depend their strength and 
growth. Such in general terms was the result of applying to 
poverty the principles regulating any successful evolution; in 
other words, such were the laws which could be broken only at the 
expense of the communal well-being. It was a favourite form 
of self-deception to presume that laws of nature would be held in 
abeyance to favour some simple or seemingly cheap solution of 
an important question. The ignorant could only demonstrate the 
fallacy of perpetual motion machines by a process of trial, tedious, 
costly, and too often ruinous, whereas the scientific man by the 
application of the law of the conservation of energy would do so ina 
relatively short time. The error of sociological devices, conceived 
in defiance of natural laws, would possibly take longer to 
demonstrate, but the ultimate result was certain, and the longer 
the delay the higher the cost of the unsuccessful experiment. 
The lecturer, in applying the above principle to State help which 
if given at all must be sufficient in amount, stigmatised out-door 
relief as unsound and sentimental—unsound, because the com- 
munity had a supreme interest in preserving or creating the 
capacity which was thus abandoned, and because each case was 
infectious to the sound portion of the community ; sentimental, 
because it satisfied the sentiment of the giver rather than the 
needs of the receiver, and protracted the disease rather than 
remedied it. It kept the patient in his insanitary and overcrowded 
dwelling and encouraged him to endure prolonged misery through 
insufficiency of his total resources, when a satisfactory social 
arrangement would ensure him receiving support in exchange for 
a fair day’s work, or help him to improved condition through his 
own efforts. 
