168 THE DESCENT OF MAN. Part I. 



by Mr. Wallace and Mr. Galton. 11 Most of my remarks 

 are taken from these three authors. With savages, the 

 weak in body or mind are soon eliminated ; and those 

 that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of 

 health. We civilised men, on the other hand, do our 

 utmost to check the process of elimination ; we build 

 asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick ; we 

 institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their 

 utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last 

 moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination 

 has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution 

 would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus 

 the weak members of civilised societies propagate their 

 kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of 

 domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly 

 injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon 

 a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the 

 degeneration of a domestic race ; but excepting in the 

 case of man himself, hardly any one is so ignorant as 

 to allow his worst animals to breed. 



The aid which we feel impelled to give to the help- 

 less is mainly an incidental result of the instinct of 

 sympathy, which was originally acquired as part of 

 the social instincts, but subsequently rendered, in the 

 manner previously indicated, more tender and more 

 widely diffused. Nor could we check our sympathy, if 

 so urged by hard reason, without deterioration in the 



and a rejoinder in the ' Spectator,' Oct. 3rd and I7th 1868. It has 

 also been discussed in the ' Q. Journal of Science,' 1869, p. 152, and by 

 Mr. Lawson Tait in the 'Dublin Q. Journal of Medical Science,' Feb. 

 1869, and by Mr. E. Kay Lankester in his ' Comparative Longevity/ 

 1S70, p. 128. Similar views appeared previously in the 'Australasian,' 

 July 13, 1867. I have borrowed ideas from several of these writers. 



11 For Mr. Wallace, see ' Antbropolog. Review,' as before cited, 

 Mr. Galton in ' Macmillan's Magazine,' Aug. 1865, p. 318 ; also his 

 great work, ' Hereditary Genius,' 1870. 



