umption of gin, wages might as well stay at a
minimum. But the tacit assumption that all changes of human nature are
impracticable is simply a cynical and unproved assertion. All of us
here hold, I imagine, that human nature has in a sense been changed. We
hold that, with all its drawbacks, progress is not an illusion; that
men have become at least more tolerant and more humane; that ancient
brutalities have become impossible; and that the suffering of the
weaker excites a keener sympathy. To say that, in that sense, human
nature must be changed, is to say only that the one sound criterion of
all schemes for social improvement lies in their ethical tendency. The
standard of life cannot be permanently raised unless you can raise the
standard of motive. Old-fashioned political theorists thought that a
simple change of the constitutional machinery would of itself remedy
all evils, and failed to recognise that behind the institutions lie all
the instincts and capabilities of the men who are to work them. A
similar fallacy is prevalent, I fancy, in regard to what we call social
reforms. Some scheme for a new mode of distributing the products of
industry would, it is often assumed, remedy all social evils. To my
thinking, no such change would do more than touch the superficial
evils, unless it had also some tendency to call out the higher and
repress the lower impulses. Unless we can to some extent change "human
nature," we shall be weaving ropes of sand, or devising schemes for
perpetual motion, for driving our machinery more effectively without
applying fresh energy. We shall be falling into the old blunders;
approving Jack Cade's proposal--as recorded by Shakespeare--that the
three-hooped pot should have seven hoops; or attempting to get rid of
poverty by converting the whole nation into paupers. No one, perhaps,
will deny this in terms; and to admit it frankly is to admit that every
scheme must be judged by its tendency to "raise the manhood of the
poor," and to make every man, rich and poor, feel that he is
discharging a useful function in society. Old Robert Owen, when he
began his reforms, rested his doctrine and his hopes of perfectibility
upon the scientific application of a scheme for "the formation of
character". His plans were crude enough, and fell short of success. But
he had seen the real conditions of success; and when, in after years,
he imagined that a new society might be made by simply collecting men
of any