vi] LONDON WORKERS, SECULARISTS, ETC. 91 



or education ; or to claim, on the other hand, that it is 

 wholly and absolutely determined by them — seem to me to be 

 propositions which are alike essentially unthinkable and also 

 entirely opposed to experience. To my mind both factors 

 necessarily enter into the determination of conduct as well as 

 into the development of character, and, for the purposes of 

 social life and happiness, a partial determinism, as developed 

 and practised by Owen, is the only safe guide to action, 

 because over it alone have we almost complete control. 

 Heredity, through which it is now known that ancestral 

 characteristics are continually reappearing, gives that infinite 

 diversity of character which is the very salt of social life ; by 

 environment, including education, we can so modify and 

 improve that character as to bring it into harmony with the 

 possessor's actual surroundings, and thus fit him for perform- 

 ing some useful and enjoyable function in the great social 

 organism. 



Although most people have heard of New Lanark, few 

 have any idea of Owen's work there or of the means by which 

 he gradually overcame opposition and achieved the most 

 remarkable results. It will, therefore, not be out of place to 

 give a short account of his methods as explained in his 

 autobiography ; and it will also be advisable to give a very 

 brief sketch of the early life of one of the most remarkable, 

 most original, and, in many respects, most truly admirable 

 characters which has adorned the nineteenth century. 



Robert Owen was born in 1771, and brought up in 

 Newtown, a small town in Montgomeryshire, North Wales. 

 His father was a saddler by trade ; his mother a farmer's 

 daughter. He was sent to the town school when about five 

 years old, where the teaching was limited to what are now 

 termed the three R.'s, and he learnt so quickly that when 

 about seven years old the schoolmaster took him as an 

 usher to teach the younger children, and for the next two 

 years he learnt nothing more at school except how to teach. 

 This, however, he appears to have taught himself to some 

 purpose, as his after-life shows. At nine he entered the shop 



