The Labour Question in Britain #264810

No one now leads the world, either from above or from below. A great event occurs which gradually reconciles the most opposed sentiments. Who did it? N 0 one and yet every one, not through any conscious desire preceding and preparing the issue, but through some need which demanded a solution and through the satisfaction which greeted it when found. Powerful forces are at work, overruling the will of the masses as well as of the classes, and pointing to the influence of the laws which shape the conditions of human life. We are now beginning to understand that our task is not to make the present world to our liking, but to learn how it is made, and that we have, not a given combination to discover, but a phenomenon to observe which, if we would understand it aright, must like all others be observed scientifically. Indeed, in questions of social science, the public is now as suspicious of partisans and agitators as it was formerly pre judiced in favour of politicians and distrustful of painstaking research, and turns for information to patient and earnest observers, upon the results of whose studies, conducted with scrupulous precision, it bases its own opinions. It is the precision and certainty of their observational methods which has won general confidence in the results. Thus, gradually, after long ostracism, a justly conceived social science has received the rights of citizenship by public acclamation.