unfit," "the criminal," "the
unemployable," and how easily we forget that behind these general terms
are unique individuals with personal histories and varying needs.

Even the most refined statistics are nothing but an abstraction. But if
that truth is held clearly before the mind, the polygons and curves of
the statisticians can be used as a skeleton to which the imagination and
our general sense of life give some flesh and blood reality. Human
statistics are illuminating to those who know humanity. I would not trust
a hermit's inferences about the statistics of anything.

It is then no simple formula which answers our question. The problem of a
human politics is not solved by a catch phrase. Criticism, of which these
essays are a piece, can give the direction we must travel. But for the
rest there is no smooth road built, no swift and sure conveyance at the
door. We set out as if we knew; we act on the notions of man that we
possess. Literature refines, science deepens, various devices extend it.
Those who act on the knowledge at hand are the men of affairs. And all
the while, research studies their results, artists express subtler
perceptions, critics refine and adapt the general culture of the times.
There is no other way but through this vast collaboration.

There is no short cut to civilization. We say that the truth will make us
free. Yes, but that truth is a thousand truths which grow and change. Nor
do I see a final state of blessedness. The world's end will surely find
us still engaged in answering riddles. This changing focus in politics is
a tendency at work all through our lives. There are many experiments. But
the effort is half-conscious; only here and there does it rise to a
deliberate purpose. To make it an avowed ideal--a thing of will and
intelligence--is to hasten its coming, to illumine its blunders, and, by
giving it self-criticism, to convert mistakes into wisdom.

CHAPTER V

WELL MEANING BUT UNMEANING: THE CHICAGO VICE REPORT

In casting about for a concrete example to illustrate some of the points
under discussion I hesitated a long time before the wealth of material.
No age has produced such a multitude of elaborate studies, and any
selection was, of course, a limiting one. The Minority Report of the
English Poor Law Commission has striking merits and defects, but for our
purposes it inheres too deeply in British conditions. American tariff and
trust investigations are massive eno