3 i2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



become weak ; they are the one-eyed among the blind. We shall 

 thus have obtained a survival of the weak, who will beget weak off- 

 spring. The argument of the Darwinians may then be turned back 

 upon them, and we may propose on our side the following theorem : 

 To realize the normal conditions most favorable to mankind is to 

 assume the development and selection of a majority of the strong 

 while saving only a minority of the weak ; for to be sick is the 

 exception when the conditions as to hygiene and food are at the 

 best. 



The reasoning of Mr. Spencer, repeated by M. de Candolle, is, in 

 our view, valid only under abnormal conditions. If we bring up chil- 

 dren effeminately, in mental and physical idleness, if we feed them on 

 candies instead of bread and meat, if we keep them in a greenhouse 

 and out of the open air, if we do not let them take any exercise for 

 fear they will be tired, we shall evidently debase them, and prepare, 

 through them, for the debasement of the race itself. In short, the 

 causes for the deterioration of a generation are luxury, effeminacy, 

 and idleness. There is nothing strange from this point of view in Dr. 

 Jacoby's demonstration, that extinction is the ultimate fate awaiting 

 every royal and aristocratic family, that it has come or will come upon 

 the Csesars, the Medicis, the Valois, the Bourbons, our French nobility, 

 the Venetian aristocracy, and the English lords ; for it is in such fam- 

 ilies that the causes of decay, inseparable from power and riches, pro- 

 duce their fatal results. Sterility, mental disorders, premature death, 

 and the ultimate extinction of the race, do not constitute a future 

 reserved particularly and exclusively for sovereign dynasties ; all the 

 privileged classes, all families occupying exclusively elevated positions, 

 share the lot of reigning families, although to a lesser degree, which 

 degree is always in proportion to the grandeur of their privileges and 

 the altitude of their social state. But if we grant this principle for 

 once, we may still ask the pessimist disciples of Darwin if philanthropy 

 is in the habit of assuring to the needy the luxury and the soft life of 

 aristocracies. It at least, one may say, permits idleness ; but that is 

 the fault of those who come to the assistance of the suffering working- 

 men, for it is their right and duty to require an equivalent in labor for 

 the assistance they give. 



We have as yet examined only the first of the Darwinian theorems 

 relative to the effects of misapplied philanthropy : a society may 

 deteriorate in a physical respect by the artificial preservation of the 

 weakest, if it does not conform to the real course of nature. The 

 Darwinians add to this that it will also deteriorate in a moral respect, 

 by the artificial preservation of the individuals " least capable of tak- 

 ing care of themselves." The principle on which this new theorem is 

 based is that the laws of heredity and selection are applicable to the 

 moral as well as to the physical side. We admit that Messrs. Galton, 

 Ribot, and Jacoby have undoubtedly established this principle. Moral 



