HYGIENE AS A BASIS OF MORALS. 69 



the principle penetrating and universal, because founded in the very- 

 laws of our being. 



It will scarcely be denied that the most highly civilized races and 

 nations are also, on the whole, the most distinguished for morality, 

 and that the stage of progress of a people at any given period may 

 be fairly estimated by the character of the moral code then prevail- 

 ing. This is so well understood that illustration is unnecessary. It 

 then follows that the development of morality is inseparable from the 

 general progress. But the degree of civilization of a people at any 

 given stage is determined by the nature of its environment i. e., by 

 the conditions under whose influence the nation has developed. It has 

 been pointed out by a distinguished philosopher in literature and art, 

 Professor Taine, that " the profound differences which exist between 

 the German races on the one hand, and the Greeks and Latins on the 

 other, have arisen, for the most part, from the differences between the 

 countries in which they are settled" for social conditions are deter- 

 mined primarily by organic or bodily conditions these, in turn, de- 

 pending on the physical environment. Thus, the general sources of 

 organic life must be recognized as the sources also of morals ; and the 

 emotional, intellectual, and moral nature of man as an integrant part 

 of his physical organism : being such, these higher qualities are neces- 

 sarily modified by the conditions which influence and modify the phys- 

 ical organism. 



A distinguished English sanitarian, Mr. Edwin Chadwick, has said 

 that he could build a city which would give any desired death-rate 

 from fifty or any number higher than fifty, to five or perhaps even 

 less than five in a thousand, annually ; and the President of the Health 

 Department of the British Social Science Association, at the annual 

 meeting in 1875, expressed his unqualified confidence in the feasibility 

 of Mr. Chadwick's proposition. This means nothing less than that 

 the death-rate, within these wide limits, from five or less to fifty or 

 more per thousand annually, depends on the degree of attention paid 

 to certain public sanitary regulations. 



Side by side with this proposition, I venture (and with a degree of 

 confidence not less than that of Mr. Chadwick) to place another propo- 

 sition far more radical than his, viz., that a city might be so built, and 

 the municipality so administered, as to secure any desired degree of 

 morality within certain limits. That these limits can not, at present, 

 be as exactly defined as in the case of the death-rate, results from the 

 lack of systematic study of the subject of morals, and the consequent 

 want of complete statistics in this department of sociology. The na- 

 ture of the limits may, however, be designated ; and I beg to illus- 

 trate this point by reference to the principles of animal development, 

 of which it has been said, by Professor Du Bois-Reymond, that " the 

 laws of organic structure must account for whatever, in organisms, is 

 either useless or actually disadvantageous " natural selection account- 



