Note 5 — Chapter XVII

Statistics only define—and primarily for the imagination—the general laws and principles on which they rest. The clear-cut mathematical form strikes and 'catches on,' where a more universal statement sounds vague and glides off. Hence, as one says, they may prove anything. The fact is, they prove nothing. They only illustrate in diagrammatic form the theory which presided at their collection. To emphasise the fundamental nature of ethics for human development you need only say that conduct is three-fourths or (as to some minds the precision rises with the denominator of the fraction 17/20) of human life.