8 NATURE AND NURTURE 



discussions are no use, philosophical reasoning is no use. 

 We need to observe, measure, and record, to analyse by 

 the methods of exact science, before we can advance in our 

 sociology, before we can aid our working classes to a true 

 insight of the factors which make for or mar our 

 national vigour. 



That lesson was the experience I gained as a lecturer 

 for this League some thirty years ago. It took me, as 

 a slow thinker, several years to learn it, and very little 

 return I made for that to me inestimable knowledge. 

 Briefly, this is what I learnt : I am endeavouring to help, 

 where I am really ignorant. These men ask me as to 

 the facts of human life and I reply with theory and dogma. 

 The university has omitted the great essential for social 

 work — a concrete study of man. We have yet to collect 

 the data upon which such a study can be based — the very 

 calculus by which it can be analysed has yet to be invented. 



I am speaking of thirty years ago. It would be in- 

 vidious to mention individual workers in this field during 

 the past thirty years ; but one name I will mention, 

 that of Francis Galton, who in his papers of the decade 

 centring round 1880 gave social workers the foundation 

 on which the calculus of correlation has been finally estab- 

 Ushed. Quietly also, and without our fully realizing it, 

 masses of sociological data are now being officially col- 

 lected and partially tabled. I refer to the medical inspec- 

 tion of school children by the county council education 

 boards. The schedules drawn up, especially in the case of 

 industrial school children, contain parental data often of 

 the highest value — wages of father, rent, number of rooms, 

 occupation of mother, number of living and dead children, 

 health of parents, record of special diseases and disabihties, 

 and much else of interest. Not only is this official infor- 



