Excerpt from Aspects of the Social Problem It should be definitely recognised as the extreme of folly to despise the material conditions of life. The prin ciple here suggested is not, as often misrepresented, that some undefined miracle of moral agency is loftier and better than any intelligible causation. The point is simply that all conditions practically mean human action, and all human action issues from the wfiole disposition Of human minds. Therefore the disposition of the mind as a whole is the determining condition Of all conditions, and though men may suffer through the character of others, they can gain and retain no permanent advantage excepting through their own. N ow characters or dispositions react altogether differently to conditions which are quantitatively and materially the same, according to the means by which they come, and their consequent relation to the feelings and expectations of the persons concerned. Help from a dutiful son may put heart into a man to struggle through his distress the same money, thrown to him by a stranger, may crush him to the earth. And thus a well-meaning attempt to effect an improvement may quickly quadruple the evil, and such a result is observed with terrible fre quenoy whereas, when approached in a different way, the evil may vanish before a sure and persistent growth of good. The difference between two such attempts will be found to depend mainly on the different relation of the methods adopted to the character both Of those to be benefited and of any who have been accomplices in the mischief which it is desired to arrest. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.