THE PROBLEM OF THE FUTURE 29 



my experience of the working man is somewhat out o£ 

 date, I believe he is now, as thirty years ago, eager for 

 something better tlian rhetoric and verbal controversy ; 

 I am not at all sure that he is not as heartily tired of the 

 ways of politicians as any member of the educated 

 classes, and that our recent election results signify, not 

 that the working man has not yet made up his mind 

 on such things as the House of Lords and Tariff Reform, 

 but rather that he has no marked confidence in the leaders 

 of either political party. If this possibility be in the least 

 true, then surely the time is apt for the work of our 

 League. I would not ask you to accept the views — far 

 too hastily brought before you in the course of a brief 

 lecture — without much criticism and thought ; but I 

 would ask you to bear in mind two or three fundamental 

 propositions : — 



First, that human society can now be studied by exact 

 methods, and that it is as subject to rigid laws of change 

 as any other group of living organisms. 



Secondly, that social reform must justify itself, not by 

 rhetoric nor by appeal to uneducated emotions, but by 

 showing that the proposed changes will tend not only to 

 immediate, but to future national welfare. 



Thirdly, as I have specially endeavoured to illustrate, 

 that no final solution of almost any social problem can 

 be reached as long as we have not definitely settled 

 whether nature or nurture is the more important factor 

 in settling the character of the next generation. 



You may be far from accepting my conclusions on this 

 point. I make no appeal to you to do so, but I do assert 

 that if you have not realized the magnitude of this 

 nature versus nurture problem, if you have not seen that 

 its study is fundamental, if you have merely shuffled it 



