THE PROBLEM OF THE FUTURE 5 



convulsed academic Europe at the end of the fifteenth 

 century ; and those youthful Humanists were apostles 

 to the whole population. Many of you know better 

 than I whether a new Humanism is wanted in our uni- 

 versities, and what chance a demand for knowledge of 

 man would stand against the excitement raised by 

 discussing a proposal to modify a football rule. Still 

 I believe in youth, in spite of the fact that, or possibly 

 because, I am getting old. If there is to be a reform in 

 our academic teaching, I should have more hope of 

 youth, enthusiastic and unpledged to the authorized, 

 carrying it through than a series of Royal Commissions. 

 Whatever be the case now, whatever may be the case in 

 the future, I am certain that in the past the academic 

 training was not such that it threw any light directly on 

 the treatment of social problems. Indirectly we were 

 taught to think by exact methods, indirectly we came to 

 consider ourselves as units in a community — were it either 

 school or college. But directly to reason by exact methods 

 about ourselves or our fellow men as parts of a great 

 social structure — the science of man — lay wholly outside 

 the academic field. Social reform, political move- 

 ments, national welfare, were not subjects for exact 

 study, they were matters for opinion, for discussion, or 

 for rhetoric, without preliminary academic training such 

 as we demand in the physicist or the biologist. Here theory 

 followed the codification of phenomena ; there opinion 

 justified itself in nine cases out of ten by a summary of 

 those facts only which supported the prejudgement. 

 If you think my criticism is harsh, I would ask you to 

 study the evidence attached to the Report of almost 

 any recent Royal Commission. You will find it a mere 

 summary of the opinions of a few individuals who have 



