SCIENTIFIC PHILANTHROPY. 525 



been obliged to proceed by a kind of fallowings, by suffering a vege- 

 tation too luxuriant and too concentrated at one point to be succeeded 

 by a provisory rest and sterility ; but a superior system, which has 

 prevailed in the cultivation of the land, will without doubt be applied 

 some day to the cultivation of the mind : it is the system of allotments 

 and improvements, and it should be made the basis of general educa- 

 tion. We can, furthermore, avoid at this point, also, the excessive 

 evils of repartition, the antinomies of intellectual luxury and intellect- 

 ual want, by the diffusion of knowledge through the mass of the na- 

 tion ; and this is one of the essential objects and one of the beneficent 

 results of scientific philanthropy. Without that, mankind, divided 

 into a class of intelligent men and a class of ignorant ones, would re- 

 semble the twins of Presburg, who were united by the after part of 

 the thorax. One of them was bright and gentle, while the other was 

 stupid and ill-natured, and constantly struggling against her sister, 

 notwithstanding both their bodies were united into one ; and her 

 violent conduct did harm to both. 



In addition to the material and intellectual advantages we have 

 just demonstrated, philanthropy brings precious moral advantage to 

 the whole race. It develops, in the individuals and the people who 

 exercise it, the qualities of heart most important for social life. Dar- 

 win and his partisans early recognized how essential to society is the 

 development of altruistic inclinations ; even justice is impossible with- 

 out those inclinations, for they alone can restrain egoism. A soci- 

 ety without pity is always careless of the right. Natural selection, 

 which is exercised now to the advantage of the most intelligent peo- 

 ples, will also in the future, we hope, be exercised to the advantage of 

 the best and most just, when the understanding of the truth shall be 

 complete enough to win over the will of the best. Selection always 

 gives the day to those who adapt themselves most perfectly to the 

 new medium ; and the human medium of the future will without 

 doubt be the reign of fraternity and justice. Those nations only will 

 survive then which shall be best adapted to the altruistic type ; that is, 

 which shall be able to live best and to propagate themselves in a me- 

 dium chiefly intellectual and moral, in which knowledge and sympathy 

 shall have the first rank. 



This adaptation of actual societies to the ideal society by the simul- 

 taneous advance of science and sympathy, will probably bring about a 

 transformation of the type of the species, a greater development of 

 the brain than of the other organs, a substitution of mental and moral 

 strength for physical force. The actual brain is already an immensely 

 enlarged vertebra ; the brain of future races will perhaps be not only 

 in volume but in organization, also and especially, as different from 

 the brain of existing races as that is from simple vertebra?. The nerv- 

 ous system of civilized man is already thirty per cent greater than 

 that of the savage. Now, cerebral development seems to have a re- 



