There is no royal road to the solution of these serious problems. They call for infinite, patient and untiring tact, while they also demand the employment of many and varied well-considered methods, based on a sound foundation of sanitary and social science. The day for reform by theory is over; the moment for practice by individual example and co-operative effort has arrived. V. SOME CHARACTERISTICS OF MAN'S PHYSICAL NATURE Before proceeding to suggest some means by which to increase the stability of the national health through the agency of family life, it will be advantageous to recall the advice given to students of any form of life by Professor Arthur Thomson:--that they should, before attempting to form conclusions as to its nature, submit its constitution to analysis, with the assistance of what he described as the biological prism. This, he says, will throw light on the inherited nature of the creature--the capital, so to say, with which it is endowed at birth. It will illuminate the functional nature of its parts, and will reveal what it does in the course of its ceaseless activities--nervous, muscular and organic. Further, the prismatic rays will render visible the results of some of the influences dependent upon the environment with which it is surrounded, which play upon it before and after birth. Unfortunately these rays, when directed to human nature, cannot penetrate so deeply nor divulge so clearly the secrets of this the highest and most complex form of life, as they do when directed to its simpler manifestations. All ordinary difficulties are enhanced by our human capacity for racial admixture and the creation of an artificial environment.