nal relinquishment of
old ways than as a spontaneous forward movement into new ones. Thus,
although the people comply more and more willingly with the by-laws of
the sanitary authority, I could not say with conviction that this is
anything more than a compliance. As they grow less used to squalor, no
doubt they cannot bear its offensiveness so well as of old; but we may
not infer from this fact that any new and positive aspirations towards a
comelier home-life have been born in them. The improvement is only one
of those negative changes that have been thrust upon them from the
outside.

Nor can anything better be said of their increasing conformity to the
requirements of the new thrift. I think it true that the wages are spent
more prudently than of old. The sight of a drunken man begins to be
unusual; he who does not belong to a "club" is looked upon as an
improvident fool; but to imagine the people thus parsimonious for the
pleasure of it is to imagine a vain thing. Their occasional outbursts of
extravagance and generosity go to show that their innermost taste has
not found a suitable outlet in wage-earning economy. That miserly
"thrift" which is preached to them as the whole duty of "the Poor"--what
attractions can it have for their human nature? If men practise it, they
do so under the compulsion of anxiety, of fear. Their acquiescence may
seem like a change; yet as it springs from no germinating tastes or
desires or inner initiative, so it acquires no true momentum. Not in
that, nor in any other submissive adaptation to the needs of the passing
moment, shall we see where the villagers are really rousing out of
stagnation into a new mode of life.

On the other hand, where their vitality goes out, under no necessity,
but of its own accord, to do something new just for the sake of doing
it, there a true growth is proceeding; and there are signs that this is
happening. Especially one notes three main directions in which, as I
think, the village is astir--three directions, coinciding with three
kinds of opportunity. The opportunities are those afforded, first by the
Church and other agencies of a missionary kind; second, by newspapers;
and third, by political agitation. In each of these directions the
village instincts appear to be finding something that they want, and to
be moving towards it spontaneously--for they are under no compulsion to
move. The invitations from the Church, it is true, never cease; but no
villa