It seemed to me probable that all these conditions and others also had a part in the trouble, and I suggested that a fundamental way to study the question would be to take, say, a hundred typical cases of boys coming before the courts, and have social workers, by gaining their confidence, make an intimate study of their life-histories, trying to see just how the conditions of the city had acted upon their development, and where and why they had gone wrong. The cases would doubtless differ much from one another, and all together would be likely to indicate a whole system of improvements tending to make the community a better place for boys to grow up in. Nothing adequate would be accomplished by working upon any one cause. I hold, then, that in all studies of degeneracy aiming to be thorough and suggest thorough remedies, _the conception of “the cause” should give way to that of organic development_. Even accidents, viewed largely, are not isolated causes but the outcome of events which we can understand and control. It is easy for a person with a particular bias regarding causes of degeneration to present statistics which seem to confirm his view: he has only to display the facts in such a manner as to reveal the operation of the cause in which he is interested, unconsciously concealing the truth that others are equally operative. If he is a student of heredity he will so present matters—and quite honestly, too—that you will wonder you ever thought anything else of much importance; but the next man, armed with facts just as cogent, will give you the same impression regarding education. I suppose there is nothing which more confuses and discourages the amateur student of society than this illusive and contradictory character in what seem to be, and often are, quite trustworthy facts. Unless he can get a commanding and reconciling view, his case, as a thinker, is hopeless.