XI 

 MAN DEPENDS ON SOCIETY 



I VENTURED to say in this place last week that the obliga- 

 tions of civic life sit all too lightly on the minds of many 

 men, otherwise blameless and estimable. I even held these 

 men to be, in a considerable degree, responsible for defects 

 in the conduct of public business both in the imperial and 

 in the local assemblies. These defects are perhaps most 

 visible on the larger scale of the former : so many are the 

 really important reforms which everyone would like to see 

 carried out ; so extraordinarily narrow are the limits of the 

 legislative outcome year by year ; and so slack is the hand 

 which controls the national expenditure, in spite of all the 

 eloquence with which the nation is regaled. I we our- 

 selves were more earnest in our citizenship, more resolutely 

 bent upon extending downwards the quiet joys of national 

 sobriety, industry, thrift, and social justice, we should be 

 able to find more efficient instruments. But, as things are 

 at present, we tolerate incapacity in public business, and 

 the irrelevance of mere rhetoric, with far more patience and 

 placidity than we show towards inefficiency in the methods 

 of a company in which we happen to hold shares. 



If these conclusions are correct, then it follows as a 

 matter of course that no problem, imperial or local, has 



