SPECIAL ARTICLE.

New Zealand Mail, 29 January 1902, Page 52

SPECIAL ARTICLE.

(By Sir Robert Stout, K.C.M.G., C.J.)

fAr.T. Rights Resekyed.]

EXPERIMENTS

“Dost thou know a castle in the heart of Spain?”

It has been said that the great merit J of Francis Bacon’s philosophical worK was that it directed men’s attention t fact. He made the reformation and radical cure of the sciences dependent on two conditions Objectively in the reduction of science to experience and the study of nature; subjectively . m the purification of the mind and intellect from all abstract theories and transmitted prejudices. This philosophical position was the antithesis of that of the schoolmen. The impetus to rely on experience given by Bacon is felt to-day. It influences our science; and we have by conimpn consent adopted experience as our guide in the science

and art of government. . „ ! We speak of “Social Experiments, j and in our journals we read of this and . that law being on its tria'.. re- j presentative government” was said over j forty years ago to be on its trial, in using such phrases and adopting that attitude to new social and political laws, we seem to be unconscious that our point of view is different from that o. •[■£ is an assumption tiiat , we have no guidance save experience, j no law laid down for us to follow and ; no internal monitor to determine our . course. The success of the experiment j is to determine whether the law is right j or wrong, wise or unwise. Testing a : proposed law by an appeal to a law of j Nature, or to a Divine Commandment, i or to men’s consciences, has been aban- ; doned. We glory in making experi- , ments. | It is too late, perhaps, to question this point of view. I doubt if an appeal to the rights of the State as determined by its origin or growth or to the rights of men, and the limits of State ° authority over men, would be listened to nowadays. But have we realised what is involved in this appeal to experience? Is experiment to be the rule applied to all that concerns humanity? For example, would we test the truth or falsehood of a religious belief by an appeal to experience? A very able lecture was some time ago delivered by the Rev. Professor att in Dunedin, in which he dealt with the Anglican doctrine of Apostolical Succession. I was much struck by the learned Professor’s boldly asking whether those who are said to have transmitted to them this Apostolical gift or endowment were any better than the Spurgeons, or other eminent Nonconformists who made no claim to this gift? He appealed to experience; can we rely on experience to decide which religion is true or which is the best? ould it be any test of the relative merits or truth of, say, the Roman Catholic and Protestant dogmas to compare the moral, social and industrial condition of the inhabitants of Sicily with those of Norwav? Or can the truth or the falsity tf

Buddhism as compared with Christianity be ascertained by contrasting the Buddhists of Japan with the Christians of Manila? Do we, I wonder, when we complacently speak of ‘‘experiments/’ adequately comprehend the philosophical position which underlies our appeal to experience ? Do we admit that it is by experiment we must test all proposed reforms for the amelioration of humanity? If we do, I hope we will not shrink from all that is involved in this admission.

Assuming, however, that in all proposals made for reform in our social life, experiment is to be the test of their wisdom or unwisdom, it is necessary for us to have a clear view of the goal we hope to attain. The aim should surely bo the production of the best breed of human beings. A human being has, it has been said, to be viewed from at least three points of view—his physical well-being, his intellectual endowment and his conduct in society. If any proposed reform would result in the producing of puny, stunted weaklings who would be short-lived and liable to maladies, we would not think much of the proposal. We hope to see the physique of the race improved; to have stalwart, powerful, long-lived men and women whose phagocytes, if Metschinkoff’s theory is true, are powerful to attack and resist invading bacteria. Suppose we find certain employments reducing the vitality of the race, making the workers engaged in the work prematurely aged, and their children unhealthy and weakly, would it not be our duty to do without the products of such an industry rather than that the health of the people should be impaired? Then we need brainy men and women, of wise discourse, “looking before and after.” If the result of any proposal is to produce a brood of human beings of low reasoning power, incapable of serious thought, what is the value of it? Are such human beings desirable? If we think that it is not desirable to cumber the ground with men and women of low intellectuality, then anything that tends to make men unthinking, that may dwarf the intellects of our people and that pr -vents

the growth of the reasoning powers, will be as rigorously condemned as would be the introduction' of the plague. Again, a human being has a relation to other human beings and to other Urine things. All his relationships cannot be ruled by positive law. He must be a moral being and bis conduct must be altruistic. Anything that will retard bis moral growth, that will make him selfish or brutal, must be banned. The goal of social and political experiments is, it must be repeated, the creation of a high type of human being, and the production of such is a test of the wisdom or unwisdom of the experiment. 1

£or example, supine -.-- consider prison reform. Here two tmngs will have to be kept constantly in view —the safety and well-being of society, that is of the present and of future dwellers in our nation, and the welfare of those who have offended against our laws. The law must be so administered that crime is discouraged. The law must bo a terror to evil-doers. '*_ e cannot yet dispense with the dread of punishment. It may even be a moral help to a morally weak citizen. It may he.p to strengthen his will to resist tempta--4-: wh linvp nlsn another important

duty. The offender is a citizen, and we must see if he cannot be made into a o-ood and a law-abiding citizen. His defects may be hereditary, or created by bis surroundings. His physical organisation or his mental endowmen*may have affected his character, ihe author of “Erewhon” was, .tvCr al., stating a profound truth when he suggested that the criminals should be seut to hospitals, and those who got preventable ailments, to gaol. And if heredity is behind the criminal and he is a product of his ancestors, perhaps society may consider whether he should, after repeated convictions, be allowed to assume the responsibilities of parenthood and whether society’s control over him can cease on his discharge from prison. Our goal is a better race. I may take another illustration. We have changed in Wellington our mode of raising municipal taxes. That mode is no longer a burning or political question. It has been determined. We have not decided the question on abstract principles. The appeal has been to what the result will be. Three modes at least of raising taxes for our municipal needs have been suggested. One is that land alone shall be taxed, and coil improvements on the land shall not be taxed. Another mode was what was hitherto ■ in force, land and buildings, as lettable for use. The third was a tax not only on land and buildings, but on other classes of wealth in the city —on incomes.

The immediate object of levying taxes is to obtain funds to carry on the manifold works cast ou the city government. We have streets, drainage, water, lighting, libraries, fire brigade, public recreation grounds, public garden, etc., all to be maintained and cared for. Those who advocated the third mode made a strong point of the diverse duties, as showing that those who enjoyed all the things that the city provided and who had means should out of their abundance contribute to the needs of the city. The main reason why we have adopted the first mode of taxation is that it will if tried tend to the benefit of the citizens by encouraging buildings and improvements. I leave out of consideration another reason, which a few advance, that rates should equal the rent,

so that the city should become the owner of all the land. Now, this mode nas exempted millions of wealth from taxation. A capitalist is allowed to get a very large income from buildings and he escapes all taxation. One citizen may have a piece of land in a thoroughfare and on it have a building worth £20,000. Another in the same area adjoining may have buildings worth only £SOOO. The one property may be worth £I6OO a year and the other £4OO, but under the new scheme they are to pay equal taxes. The goal is what? Covering all the land in the city with buildings, and improving the architecture? No, that is not the end. The question that has to be answered is How will this scheme affect city life? Will it tend to improve the breed of men and women ? Some may say that this mode of raising revenue may tend to prevent open spaces being left, to prevent land being used for gardens, and for the growth of trees, shrubs and flowers. If

it lias this tendency, then the inquiry will have to be whether gardens, open spaces, etc., are not a necessity for the life and happiness of the people. All / will admit that if the new mode of taxation tends to the erection of manystoried buildings and to leaving no open spaces, then it has its drawbacks. Further, if it tends to make the smaller | capitalist feel that he should not pay the same as his richer neighbour, it may not be well; for the feeling that justice should be done to all is after all one of the main bonds that hold society together. This experiment of ours, like all our other experiment's, has this goal before ! it —the production of the best men and ! women. So have our State control of railways, of education, our co-operative I works, our labour laws, our mode of seti tling wages and conditions of labour, ! etc., etc. Indeed, it is because we have j this goal before us that we demand the ! exclusion of infei'ior races, and of races different from ours. It may bo better for us to pay twopence a pound moro for our sugar than to have Queensland

the home of dark races, physically, * tellectually and morally lower tha English people. But how, it will be asked, should we make experiments? Did we watch a chemist in his laboratory ? careful he is, his vessels have to clean. How precise he is m weighii and measuring the materials with u he is working. Everything is noted. , no doubt, has his personal equation, ms bias, his prejudices, his religious views, his political opinions, his racial instincts, but he allows none of these to influence his observation. His attention is riveted pn his vessels, his weights, ms measures, his substances; and the results he most carefully notes, it ve are honest, and sensible and patriotic, and by ‘‘we,” I mean all the people in the colony, we must keep as watchful an eye on our experiments as the chemist does on his.

We might have our sociological soci- i eties of investigation. Surely they j ■would be as important as societies to encourage horse racing, or to play golf, ‘ or to study natural history, to find out j new spiders, or new lepidoptera, or new ; plants. We need social science investiga- j tors —men and women with as great a . devotion to truth as the chemist or the | biologist. There might be separate so- j cieties for each experiment. Suppose j we had a society to investigate the ; result of our new mode of levying muni- ! cipal taxes. The investigators would . have to extend their operations over a , number of years. They would have to , tabulate the number of buildings say i in 1899, the gardens, the open spaces, • the unused lands, the height of build- j ings, the number of buildings, the rents, 1 the rates paid, etc., etc. Then they j would have to make a similar tabulation for 1901. and again two years hence a similar tabulation, so that the progress ; of the city could be properly and care- J fully ascertained. Then we would re- j quire to know the death rate and the sickness rate, and that might necessitate the calling in of medical experts j for the purpose. It would soon be dis- | covered that there is a difference be- i tween the social science investigator and the chemist. The difficulty—may I say perhaps impossibility?—of isolating che experiment would be apparent. Some other movement or experiment may make our tabulation erratic. As the astronomers Bernard and Adams found ! the orbit of Uranus unexplainable save on j the assumption that another planet (Neptune) was influencing it, so the so-

cial science investigator will find bis results unexplainable unless he allows for the operation of other experiments than those he is immediately considering. Further, ho must ever be on his guard against the fallacy post hoc ergo propter hoc. Mere succession does not always prove a causal connection. Adversity or prosperity might follow on reform in time, and yet the reform not jbe the cause of either. If X always follows A B C, we may say A B C is the cause of X, but if there are other things that precede X we must be careful to ascertain whether they and not ABC are

the cause of X. The interdependence of the various social and political laws, the hereditary instincts, the racial feelings, etc., etc., have all to be considered. But the magnitude of our task must not deter us from making the investigation. No one can predict exactly what will be the result of any experiment, though a knowledge of human nature and of the past history of the race may in many instances help us to a probable conclusion. Some who talk glibly of this or that result following on experiments have not, I fear, learned even the alphabet of sociology. It is a much more difficult study than chemistry or electricity. What person ignorant of chemistry or electricity ventures to express opinions on the combination of gases or on radiant energy ? And yet many write and speak of the effect of a new law who know nothing of the past social history of the race, but speak and write as if they were inspired prophets. Experiments we must have, but it will be a day of woe to us if we imagine our duty has ended in making them. Our duty then begins. We need cautious, careful, unbiassed, able investigators to test them. And when 'we get their results it may be that we will realise that we must make further experiments. Who knows but that we will then again spend our time in “Still nursing the unconquerable hope” that the new experiment is destined to inaugurate the millennium?

In the next issue of the “Mail” we shall publish a Special Article, titled—“THE DAY AFTER TO-MORROW,” By Mr W. G. Macdonald, Cape Foulwind.