SCIENTIFIC PHILANTHROPY. 313 



vices, like physical vices, end, after they have been for a long time 

 implanted in families or races, by transmitting themselves from gen- 

 eration to generation. Darwin insists much on the transmission of 

 that moral quality which he calls character, strength of will, courage, 

 self-reliance ; on the other hand, there are also, according to him, peo- 

 ple trifling, idle, and careless by right of birth, like the Irish. Trans- 

 port to the same country an equal number of Scotch and Irish, says 

 Darwin : at the end of a certain time the Irish will have become ten 

 times as numerous as the Scotch, but the latter, by virtue of their 

 hereditary qualities, will be at the head and occupying the highest 

 places. " If any one denies," says Mr. Spencer, " that children bear 

 likenesses to their progenitors in character and capacity, if he holds 

 that men whose parents and grandparents were habitual criminals, have 

 tendencies as good as those of men whose parents and grandparents 

 were industrious and upright, he may consistently hold that it matters 

 not from what families in a society the successive generations descend. 

 He may think it just as well if the most active, and capable, and pru- 

 dent, and conscientious people die without issue ; while many children 

 are left by the reckless and dishonest. But whoever does not espouse 

 so insane a proposition, must admit that social arrangements which 

 retard the multijflication of the mentally-best, and facilitate the multi- 

 plication of the mentally-worst, must be extremely injurious." Help 

 the least meritorious to propagate themselves by enfranchising them 

 from the mortality to which their absence of merit devotes them, and 

 merit itself will become more and more rare from generation to gener- 

 ation. Furthermore, besides seeing to their own preservation and that 

 of their families, the good will be obliged also to look to the preserva- 

 tion of the bad and their families, and will be thus in danger of being 

 overtaxed. This is what Stuart Mill also complains of. In conse- 

 quence of the unintelligent use of the income-tax, and the obligation 

 of every parish to support its poor, the workers are compelled to take 

 care of the idle. Is this justice? In some cases, this situation pre- 

 vents the industrious from marrying ; in others, it limits the number 

 of their children, or prevents their giving them a sufficient support ; 

 in others, it takes industrious men from their families ; in every way 

 it tends to arrest the propagation of the capable, to injure their con- 

 stitution, and to bring them down to the level of the incapable. Dur- 

 ing this time the latter will increase and multiply, conformably to the 

 misinterpreted wisdom of the Bible ; they will swarm at the expense 

 of others. This, says Mr. Spencer, is a deliberate storing-up of mis- 

 eries for future generations. We can not make a worse present to 

 posterity than to encumber it with a continually increasing number of 

 imbeciles and criminals. To aid the bad in multiplying is, in effect, 

 the same as maliciously providing for our descendants a multitude of 

 enemies. We have a right to ask if the maudlin philanthropy which 

 thinks only of ameliorating the evils of the moment and persists in 



