the right way, and patience and humility are by no means so common amongst philanthropists as we should expect them to be. At the same time there is no reason to despair. Social questions have been studied more closely in the last thirty years than they have ever been before, and already there are many signs that people in general are becoming much more conscious of their difficulties, and much more ready to recognise that the study of the problem of poverty is a science in itself. It is true that, for the moment, there are many forces, sentimental and political, which are adverse to its full application, but one can but believe that these will gradually disappear as the enlightenment of the community upon the subject becomes more complete.
We have, then, first of all to be clear in our minds as to what we mean by the word "pauperism." Though the Latin word pauper only means a poor person, "pauperism" has acquired by use a quite different signification from poverty. In a healthy community there may be many poor; there cannot be many paupers. In this country most of the people are poor in that they live upon a wage, weekly or otherwise, and have no accumulated wealth. Yet to-day the great majority of the people are self-supporting. So, too, with other countries. In Norway, nearly all are poor, yet, probably for that very reason, there are few paupers. Pauperism presupposes the means of pauperisation, which can hardly be said to exist in that country, and we find there one of the finest peasant populations in the world, both physically and morally.
What, then, is pauperism? The answer is, that it is in its essence a question of character rather than of externals. It is, so to speak, a negation, a loss of something, rather than a positive
