SCIENTIFIC PHILANTHROPY. 307 



philanthropy ignorant of social science and of the natural sciences un- 

 dertakes to correct Nature, to diminish at any price the chances of 

 mortality of the weak, to cause them by means of its care and its 

 assistance to survive artificially, what will be the results for future 

 generations? At first, population will increase more than it would 

 have done ; every one will then find himself subjected to a greater 

 difficulty in living, and exposed to destructive actions of the most in- 

 tense character. This increase of population might still produce good 

 results if it were not due to an increase in the number of the weak. 

 But the survival of the weak spoils all ; they marry with the strong, 

 who under other conditions would alone have survived ; such mar- 

 riages change the general constitution of the race, and cause it to come 

 down to a lesser degree of force, and what we might call tonicity, cor- 

 responding with the conditions of existence that have been artificially 

 created. Such an instrument, whose cords are relaxed, no longer gives 

 to strong or harmonious sounds as of old. An effeminacy of the species 

 is produced, and it has become at the same time a little more numer- 

 ous and a little weaker. In preserving the less vitalized part of the 

 present generation, we have prepared for the decadence of coming 

 generations. 



This decadence is brought about also by other causes. Your phi- 

 lanthropy, say the Darwinians, suppresses or attenuates some noxious 

 influences, and this gives delicate constitutions more chances of sur- 

 viving and propagating themselves ; but you do not perceive that, in 

 place of the unfavorable influences suppressed by you, you cause new 

 destructive ones to arise. " Let the average vitality," says Mr. Spen- 

 cer, "be diminished by more effectively guarding the weak against 

 adverse conditions, and inevitably there come fresh diseases," for the 

 increase of diseases is the correlative of diminished vitality. Look at 

 the numerous diseases unknown among barbarians from which civilized 

 races suffer. Diseases of the brain, especially, seem to increase with 

 civilization ; the proportion of them to the whole population appears 

 to have doubled in France since 1836. The activity which is stamped 

 upon industry, the arts and the sciences, political and social agitation, 

 the fever of money-making, and the consuming life of cities are en- 

 gendering in civilized nations a condition of cerebral agitation resem- 

 bling intoxication, which must predispose to intellectual troubles. We 

 may add that the necessity of supporting the weak and non-producers, 

 as Mr. Spencer says, imposes an additional excess of burden on the 

 producers ; the weariness of the latter increases till it becomes a cause 

 of sickness and premature death, and the mortality which has been 

 evaded in one shape must come l-ound in another ; and, finally, it is 

 the inferiorly endowed who survive and the best endowed who perish. 

 If this misguided fraternity is perpetuated, it will end, according to 

 the Darwinians, by changing a vigorous and youthful society into a 

 prematurely aged society. Suppose a whole nation composed of old 



