492 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



whom all humanity is eternally indebted, have lived and died in comparative 

 or absolute poverty or even penury, or sometimes have almost starved to death ; 

 while men generally, or often consciousless exploiters of their discoveries or 

 creations particularly, have harvested what they sowed in lifelong travail. 1 



Even if the engineering or chemical inventor — although possibly only applying 

 the scientific discoveries of a never-rewarded man — amass a fortune for himself, 

 yet the Collectivist knows that the gain of humanity at large is a vast multiple of 

 the individual's gain. The capitalist exploiter, rather than the occasional self- 

 enriched inventor, is the Collectivist's bugbear. 



When, however, we consider the converse of the men of genius, and when we 

 recall that thousands of the failures in life are mentally degenerate, that they are 

 constitutionally insusceptible to motives to industry and thrift and forethought — 

 when we realise that there is here a huge class of human beings who suffer 

 necessarily a lifelong handicap from ineradicable inborn defects, for* which they 

 are no more responsible than are the gifted ones for their genius — then we per- 

 ceive how profoundly the biological " laws," which we have examined, must affect 

 our sociological canons. The sheer Individualist who — ignoring the personal 

 irresponsibility for genius or degeneracy — takes his stand on individual merit and 

 demerit, can only reply that here is an ample field for private voluntary benevo- 

 lence, but that it would be wrong to mulct by State-action the meritorious and 

 desirable in order to alleviate the lot of the however pitiable undesirable. As 

 high as one goes above, however, so deep must one go below ; and if we insist 

 that the man of genius is a trustee for the Community, to whom really belong the 

 creations of his genius, so per contra the Community of to-day must take the 

 responsibility for the degeneracy which the Community of the past has handed 

 down, and must supplement the earnings of those constitutionally unfitted to 

 maintain themselves in comfort. As to the control that must accompany this 

 responsibility, if semi-disaster in the present and ultimate race-suicide are to be 

 avoided, we will speak anon. Here it suffices that the Collectivist seems to derive 

 from biological certainties a complete ethical and sociological answer to the 

 Individualist argument for the natural rewards and penalties of merit and 

 demerit in the sense of genius or talent and inborn incapacity. 



VI 



We can now pass to division (2), and can very speedily dispose of part of the 

 problem of the children. The children of the industrious and thrifty and self- 

 denying members of (i«) will necessarily possess advantages over the children 

 of the converse parents. It would be most unjust that a man who eats all his 

 cake to-day should be allowed to claim half of what his thrifty self-denying neigh- 

 bour has put by for to-morrow, or that the idle should be as well off as the 

 industrious ; and, therefore, in the course of years the industrious thrifty self- 

 denying man must accumulate advantages which his neighbour justly lacks. 

 What, however, a man has thus earned and saved is emphatically his own ; and if, 

 carrying self-denial still further, he use much of it for the benefit of his children 

 rather than of himself, they cannot, without rank injustice, be deprived of such 

 necessary and natural advantages. Moreover, it would be sociologically foolish as 



1 Authors, and even artists, may or may not starve ; and publishers and 

 dealers may or may not subsist on truffles and champagne : but that there is very 

 generally some such sort of antithesis between the lots of creators and exploiters 

 is unhappily too evident. 



