of mankind through the refractory media of prejudice, ignorance and well-meaning misconception. It rarely if ever occurs to legislators that a scientific system of society demands an acquaintance with the recently accepted conclusions of our greatest thinkers. We are suffering to-day from a pre-Darwinian government in almost all our States. "Authorities" of all kinds are quoted in support of and against any given proposal, but the "authorities" are seldom the fittest. In earlier days latin tags were considered a worthy conclusion to a speech in Senate or Legislature. Nowadays poetry or literature is called into requisition. Darwin, Spencer and Galton should at least have taught us to take trouble to learn all about the subject in hand and what bearing the scientific discoveries of our generation have upon particular problems. It is a disease of the age that we are conscious of our national short-comings in only the vaguest possible way. We are ignorant of the full extent of our misfortunes and we do not apply to them the time, trouble and money which are a preliminary necessity to discovering a remedy, and we forget the dynamic difference which must be made in our treatment of race problems as soon as we accept heredity as the controlling factor. But the preliminaries must be insisted on. Investigation, collation, classification, generalisation, and legislation, must be taken in their right order. The difficulties in the way of investigating the laws which govern heredity have as usual led to shirking the issue altogether. Even when we look the difficulty straight in the face, we pass it by. We have made a god of environment. Our best social efforts hitherto in legislation, social conventions, conduct and educational ideals (and in modern times even our religions), have come to consider environment as of paramount importance. But take environment at its highest it can only be the best soil for the best seed. _That_ is a Eugenic ideal also but it cannot convert a disease germ into a desirable citizen. Over-emphasis of reform dependent on improved environment implies that a deadly upas tree, if transplanted and properly watered and "given a better chance," will reward society with a plentiful harvest of edible nourishing fruit. The heartless school which on principles hates all reform derives its chief support from the fact that the reform which regards only environment too often descends to veneering vice with respectability or dissipates itself in futilities of a grandmotherly kind. The reformer of the future must study causes as well as phenomena. The skilled physician regards symptoms as of importance only to the extent that they assist the diagnosis of disease. Accurate analysis must consider hereditary causes as well as local symptoms.