4 NATURE AND NURTURE 



on me from that contact with the worker in the early 

 eighties. The problems that the working man was then 

 specially interested in were, from the very nature of the 

 case, sociological. He and I and everybody saw the 

 grave social difficulties of our modern industrial state. 

 But what contributions could we possibly make to their 

 solution ? We, the lecturers, were fresh from the 

 universities, and the one thing which had formed no part 

 of our training was an exact study of man. We had been 

 trained to examine with the utmost care and minuteness, 

 to reason only by aid of the most rigid mathematical 

 analysis about all physical phenomena ; we had been 

 taught that in vital phenomena, endless patience, untiring 

 observation, the finest instruments, are needful, if we 

 are to learn the truth as to the plant^and animal worlds. 

 But as to man, the only science named after him was 

 applied to the measurement of dry bones. We were left 

 to the verbal discussion of undergraduate societies for our 

 knowledge of man, and for the theories out of which we 

 were to evolve ' something better ' than mere talking 

 could provide for the working man. One may reasonably 

 suppose that this state of affairs has in the course of 

 thirty years been radically altered at our universities ; 

 that nowadays every undergraduate is taught the 

 broad facts as to heredity, fertility, and selection, and 

 their bearing on the welfare of human societies. If it 

 be so, then this League has much to give its audiences, 

 which we in the eighties had not. If it be not so, then 

 we need a new renascence — a renascence, not of learn- 

 ing, but of teaching, as the old renascence indeed was. 

 That movement was a revolt of the students, who deserted 

 the lecture-rooms of the old teachers and sought new 

 masters ; it was essentially a students' revolution which 



