SCIENTIFIC PHILANTHROPY. 309 



infirm in the hospitals hardly ever contract marriage ; so that we need 

 not fear much from their posterity. Furthermore, we might, if it should 

 become necessary, impose conditions and even legal restraints upon 

 their marriage. The same is the case with the infirm who are assisted 

 at home ; if they have any important physical infirmity, they seldom 

 think of marrying, and are hardly ever able to marry. The Darwinian 

 theorem, moreover, proves too much, for it is applicable not only to 

 the weak in body, whom philanthropy takes under its protection ; to 

 be logically carried out, it should be taken home to each family, and 

 insist that no deformed or weakly child deserves to live. We should 

 say no more, " Woe to the conquered ! " but " Woe to the weak ! " 

 In effect, when a father and mother preserve the life of their child 

 only by the exercise of the greatest care, when a doctor employs all 

 his skill upon it, that fatherly and motherly care, that medical skill, 

 will only have succeeded in preparing " artificially for society a mem- 

 ber without vigor " ; and the latter, in his turn, by marrying, will put 

 into the world children still less vigorous. The Spartan method of 

 disposing of feeble children will then become that of the perfected 

 sociology. We shall test men as we now test our guns, throwing away 

 those which can not support a certain pressure. The struggle of art 

 against the natural elimination of the least vigorous is carried on in 

 the bosom of the family rather than in the hospitals. Public philan- 

 thropy does not, therefore, appear to be responsible for the principal 

 inconveniences it brings ; it is parental love that we have to deal 

 with, and, since that love is infinitely more advantageous than incon- 

 venient to society, it is our duty to brighten, not to obscure it. 



It is rather before marriage than after the birth of children that 

 the real problem presents itself, and philanthropy should be exercised 

 in the interest of humanity itself. There is a moral question here, 

 and it is for the moralist to instruct the weak, delicate, or sickly per- 

 son, concerning the grave responsibility he assumes in contracting 

 marriage and running the danger of entailing upon his children the 

 evils from which he is suffering. Man, says Darwin, scans with scru- 

 pulous care the character and pedigree of his horses, his cattle, and 

 his dogs before matching them, but never takes such a precaution when 

 the question is one of his own marriage. It is certain that the person 

 who calls another being into life is not the only one concerned in the 

 matter, and that, if he has a good supply of physical evils in himself, 

 he ought to hesitate before condemning his posterity to them. But 

 must we go further, and make a social and judicial question of the 

 moral one ? Ought the state, the natural protector of the rights of 

 third parties, to intervene here in the physical interest of the children 

 and of the nation, as it interferes for their moral interests and even in 

 questions of mere future ? Darwin and his partisans, M. Ribot, for 

 instance, are inclined to have the state intervene now, or as soon as 

 custom shall have prepared the way for its intervention. When, says 



