Heredity and Environment 115 



We have already quoted what Huxley has said in 

 regard to la misere ; and the Scots poet Burns, who 

 has been justly called " the poet of democracy," and 

 whose heart was full of love to all mankind, indeed to 

 all nature, was well aware from personal experience of 

 the misery of the poor, and the struggle required to 

 " breast the force of circumstance, and break his birth's 

 invidious bar," and this it was that made him write 

 " Man's inhumanity to man makes countless thousands 

 mourn." Tennyson has given expression to the same 

 thought : 



" Ah yet, we cannot be kind to each other here for an hour ; 

 We whisper, and hint, and chuckle, and grin at a brother's 



shame ; 

 However we brave it out, we men are a little breed." 



Again : 



" Peace, sitting under her olive, and slurring the days gone by, 

 When the poor are hovell'd and hustled together, each sex, 

 like swine ; 

 When only the ledger lives, and not only not all men lie ; 

 Peace in her vineyard — Yes ! — but a company forges the 

 wine." ("Maud.") 



While things are so in our midst it would seem quite 

 impossible to realise or even approach to the Christian 

 ideal. We hope to prove later that this is in progress 

 even now, and will be accomplished with the evolution 

 of a higher ethical development. At one extreme we 

 have the aristocracy without work — real work, bene- 

 ficent work — of any kind to perform, only, as a rule, a 

 life of luxurious ease and the selfish grab for wealth 

 which labour alone creates ; at the other extreme, 

 poverty, misery, excess of labour, and no leisure or 

 comfort in which to develop the higher qualities of the 

 mind. As at present constituted, it is only among the 

 middle class that anything approaching the ideal life 

 is possible. In this class there is work, but not too 



