5 22 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



cess of the element which is the principle of the distinction of classes." 

 Whenever any part of mankind has too much of anything, whether it 

 be of material goods or intellectual qualities, the rest of the race im- 

 mediately finds itself having too little, and both parties suffer equally 

 from the excess and from the lack. But Nature seems to desire to 

 avenge herself for such violations of her laws, and cruelly afflicts the 

 elect and fortunate ones, chastising them " to the fourth and seventh 

 generation." 



The laws of Nature are immutable, and woe to the man who violates 

 them ! " Every privilege a man accords himself is a step toward de- 

 generacy, mental decline, and the death of his race." By abasing 

 whoever tries to raise himself above the common level of mankind, by 

 chastising the haughty, by exacting satisfaction for excess of pleasure, 

 Nature appoints the privileged ones themselves the scourges of their 

 race. " Too much fortune offends and irritates the gods," the ancients 

 thought, and the medical study of the consequences of all intellectual 

 or moral distinction, and of all selection, leads us to the same conclu- 

 sion. " Humana imprudentia impares esse voluit quos Deus cequave- 

 raV ("Human folly desires to make unequal those whom God has 

 made equal "), said Pope Clement IV, but, if this is the case, can the 

 Darwinians complain that philanthropy is trying to diminish in some 

 degree the inequalities that are born of the social regime? Does it 

 not, in this case, act in the same direction with Nature, and according 

 to its design ? 



We should, besides, be less pessimist than Mr. Jacoby in respect 

 to distinctions and selections of every kind. The theory which Mr. 

 Jacoby has deduced from Darwinism, if pushed to the extreme with- 

 out making necessary distinctions and restrictions, would go to the 

 extent of destroying even the principles from w T hich it is drawn, and 

 would overthrow the laws postulated by Darwin ; in effect, all superi- 

 ority, requiring an expenditure of force, might, by that fact itself, 

 become in the struggle for existence a germ of degeneracy instead of 

 a germ of improvement. There would be nothing really durable ex- 

 cept what did not rise above the common level, and living beings 

 would resemble those corals, the madrepores, which grow to form the 

 basis of continents as long as they do not pass the level of the sea, 

 and are not brought to die above the level of its surface. It is nec- 

 essary to distinguish here between useful and injurious inequalities, 

 between natural and acquired ones ; among the last, also, must be dis- 

 tinguished those which are in accord with Nature, and those which 

 are opposed to her. These distinctions, too much neglected by Mr. 

 Jacoby, are the very ones, in our opinion, which scientific philanthropy 

 ought always to have in view. Its aim should be to re-establish, so 

 far as possible, a degree of equality at those points where social ar- 

 rangements have created artificial inequalities, injurious and contrary 

 to Nature. To spread and equalize general instruction, the moral sen- 



