604 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



There are further ways in which this process necessarily works a 

 like general effect, however far it is carried. For, as fust as more 

 and more detrimental agencies are removed or mitigated, and as fast 

 as there goes on an increasing survival and propagation of those hav- 

 ing delicately-balanced constitutions, there arise new destructive agen- 

 cies. Let the average vitality be diminished by more effectually 

 guarding the weak against adverse conditions, and inevitably there 

 come fresh diseases. A general constitution, previously able to bear 

 without derangement certain variations in atmospheric conditions, 

 and certain degrees of other unfavorable actions, if lowered in tone, 

 will become subject to new kinds of perturbation, and new causes of 

 death. In illustration I need but refer to the many diseases from 

 which civilized races suffer, but which were not known to the uncivil- 

 ized. Nor is it only by such new causes of death that the rate of 

 mortality, when decreased in one direction, increases in another. The 

 very precautions against death are themselves, in some measure, new 

 causes of death. Every further appliance for meeting an evil, every 

 additional expenditure of effort, every extra tax to meet the cost of 

 supervision, becomes a fresh obstacle to living. For, always in a so- 

 ciety where population is pressing on the means of subsistence, and 

 where the efforts required to fulfil vital needs are so great that they 

 here and there cause premature death, the powers of producers cannot 

 be further strained by calling on them to support a new class of non- 

 producers, without, in some cases, increasing the wear and tear to a 

 fatal extent. And, in proportion as this policy is carried further in 

 proportion as the enfeeblement of constitution is made greater, the re- 

 quired precautions multiplied, and the cost of maintaining these pre- 

 cautions augmented it must happen that the increasing physiological 

 expenditure thrown on these enfeebled constitutions must make them 

 succumb so much the earlier: the mortality evaded in one shape 

 must come round in another. 



The clearest conception of the state brought about will be gained, 

 by supposing the society thus produced to consist of old people. 

 Age differs from maturity and youth in being less able to withstand 

 influences that tend to derange the functions, as well as less able to 

 bear the efforts needed to get the food, clothing, and shelter, by which 

 resistance to these influences may be carried on ; and, where no aid is 

 received from the younger, this decreased strength and increased 

 liability to derangement by incident forces make the life of age diffi- 

 cult and wearisome. Those who, though young, have weak constitu- 

 tions, are much in the same position : their liabilities to derangement 

 are similarly multiplied, and, where they have to suppoi - t themselves, 

 they are similarly overtaxed by the effort, relatively great to them 

 and made greater by the maintaining of precautions. A society of 

 enfeebled people, then, must lead a life like that led by a society of 

 people who had outlived the vigor of maturity, and yet had none to 



