or that the conditions have changed sufficiently to justify a renewal of the old ones. It is quite true that science has won great victories in the physical world : it has taught us to annihilate time and space and to conquer (with limitations) the sea and the air. It has made discoveries of enormous value in surgery and medicine. One thing it has failed to do, and that is to conquer human nature, and nothing but human nature itself can do that. This is why attempts to impose morality and conduct by Act of Parliament and to legislate in defiance of economic tendencies which are based upon human nature, are foredoomed to failure. Over and over again such attempts have been made; the legislation of the Commonwealth was the forerunner of the profligacy of the times of Charles II. We have had repeated sumptuary laws: we have had laws fixing prices, and laws fixing wages, but they have all failed in turn and all been abandoned. It has been left to the twentieth century to endeavour to resuscitate them.
The times are full of strange philosophies, the general upshot of whose teaching seems to be that we should act upon the impulse of the moment and distrust the evidence of our senses. "Futurists" would ignore everything that happened even yesterday. Socialist poets denounce "the foul hag experience" as the enemy of progress, and there is a wealth of literature of the same description. We are told to believe that instinct is a surer guide than reason. There is nothing new about this. The Pyrrhonists, more than 2000 years ago, held "that both the senses and consciousness are absolutely untrustworthy, and that just as much can be said against any opinion as in favour of it" (Funk and Wagnall's "Dict.," Pyrrhonism). So that these philosophers have advanced little beyond their predecessors. To them, of course, history and precedent either have no meaning or are
