606 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



fact that the quality of a society is physically lowered by the artificial 

 preservation of its feeblest members, there is an habitual neglect of 

 the fact that the quality of a society is lowered morally and intellect- 

 ually, by the artificial preservation of those who are least able to take 

 care of themselves. 



If any one denies 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 fami- 

 lies in a society the successive generations descend. He may think it 

 just as well if the most active, and capable, and prudent, and conscien- 

 tious 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 

 multiplication of the mentally-best, and facilitate the multiplication of 

 the mentally- worst, must be extremely injurious. 



For, if the unworthy are helped to increase by shielding them from 

 that mortality which their un worthiness would naturally entail, the 

 effect is to produce, generation after generation, a greater unworthi- 

 ness. From decreased use of self-conserving faculties already defi- 

 cient, there must result, in posterity, the smaller amounts of self-con- 

 serving faculties. The general law which we traced above, in its 

 bodily applications, may be traced here in its mental applications. 

 Removal of certain difficulties and dangers, which have to be met by 

 intelligence and activity, is followed by a diminished ability to meet 

 difficulties and dangers. Among children born to the more capable 

 who marry with the less capable, thus artificially preserved, there is 

 not simply a lower average power of self-preservation than would else 

 have existed, but the incapacity reaches in some a greater extreme. 

 Smaller difficulties and dangers become fatal in proportion as greater 

 ones are warded off. Nor is this the whole mischief. For such mem- 

 bers of a population as do not take care of themselves, but are taken 

 care of by the rest, inevitably bring on the rest extra exertion, either 

 in supplying them with the necessaries of life, or in maintaining over 

 them the required supervision, or in both. That is to say, in addition 

 to self-conservation and the conservation of their own offspring, the 

 best, havins: to undertake the conservation of the worst, and of their 

 offspring, are subject to an overdraw upon their energies. In some 

 cases this stops them from marrying ; in other cases it diminishes the 

 numbers of their children ; in other cases it causes inadequate feeding 

 of their children ; in other cases it brings their children to orphanhood 

 in every way tending to arrest the increase of the best, to deteriorate 

 their constitutions, and to pull them down toward the level of the worst. 



Fostering the good-for-nothing at the expense of the good is an 

 extreme cruelty. It is a deliberate storing-up of miseries for future 



