7)24: preside:s^t's addkess. — section gi. 



2. Scope of Statistical Frohhms. — The original field is again 

 embraced. G-eography, for example, of any value, is not merelj a 

 rjiultitude of names, nor confined to a morpliological description of a 

 region ; it recounts the trade and commerce and the productive 

 activities of aggregations of human beings. Roads, railways, and 

 •.vaterwa3\s become significant because of the extent of their traffic, 

 or because of their volume and potentialities for carriage or produc- 

 tion. Towns are centres of human activity ; the countr\% fields of less 

 concentrated activity; territories are aggregates of effort expressing 

 itself under some dominating political and social ideals, and all these 

 are analysed and measured by the statistician to the end that their 

 meaning may become manifest. 



He is concerned with the efficiency of the human unit and the 

 mode by which that efficiency is expressed ; with the term of his life, 

 and the way in which that term actualises itself; with the inter- 

 ferences of disease with man's activities or happiness ; with the way 

 in which the various diseases cut short the human career. He is con- 

 cerned with the nature of man's evolution ; with the expression of his 

 character in life ; with his ancestral endowment ; with the whole range 

 of his heredities ; with his mode of expressing his social or antisocial 

 qualities ; with his relations in peace and Avar. 



The statistician must also analyse the situations which human 

 relationships bring into being, the mode of his productive activities ; 

 the exchanges of his productions. Hence he must grasp the principles 

 of economics and finance, the theory of money, of exchange value in 

 general, and of price. 



On the mathematical side, the theory of probability is an essential 

 instrument. The symlDolic expression of frequencies of various kinds 

 must constitute one of his instiiiments for attacking great practical 

 questions. Differential relationships, their expression and analysis, 

 are his instruments, though these do not appear in the popular publi- 

 cations which are submitted for ordinary information. 



The multiplication of flocks and herds, the yields of agriculture, 

 the extent of manufacture, the vohniie of commerce, the securities for 

 human endeavour, and for human relationships, the bases upon which 

 rest all forms of human eft'ort- — these are the matters which call for 

 the professional attention of the real statistician. 



3. Essentials of a Statistical Beview. — We can now see that what 

 should be aimed at in a corhplete statistical review of any community 

 is the presentation, in a series of panoramic views, of the features 

 of the life-conditions and life-relations of the human units of which 

 the community is made up. treating such features, however, not as the 

 circumstances affecting individuals, but as those operating to produce 

 the growth and development of the sociological masses of which the 

 Tinman units are the components. 



With this object in view we shoidd liave a review of the population 

 itself, its composition as regards race, sex, age, (fee, its fluctuations, 

 whether natural or by migration, and its aggregations to fonn towns 

 and villages. Associated with particulars of fluctuations of population 

 we require details of the births, the maiTiages, and the deaths of the 

 people, with all the wealth of information which the investigation of 

 these vital phenomena involve. We then recjuire particulars as to the 

 means by which the community sustains life and comfort, and this 

 opens up two large fields of statistical inquiry, that of production on 



