LONDON WORKERS, SECULARISTS, ETC. 91 



development of character, and, for the purposes of social life 

 and happiness, a partial determinism, as developed and prac- 

 tised 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 con- 

 tinually 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 the character as to 

 bring it into harmony with the possessor's actual surroundings, 

 and thus fit him for performing 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 re- 

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

 give a short account of his methods as explained in his auto- 

 biography ; 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 charac- 

 ters 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 chil- 

 dren, 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 of a draper and haberdasher, a friend 

 of his father's, where he went daily for a year, but taking his 

 meals at home. He was a great reader, and being well known 

 to all the inhabitants, and evidently much liked and admired, 

 he had free access to all the libraries in the place, including 

 those of the clergyman, doctor, lawyer, etc., and he says that he 

 generally read a volume every day. He also thought much 



