ESSAYS 493 



well as ethically unjust so to deprive them, (i) because the desire to benefit 

 children is often a stronger incentive than the desire to benefit self, and the 

 Community as a whole profits by the sum of its units' industry and thrift ; and 

 (2) because the children of such parents are likely, both from inheritance and from 

 training, to prove in their turn similarly desirable members of the Community. 



As regards the children of men of genius and talent in (1 b) no farther 

 elaboration seems really necessary : but it may be pointed out that, since children 

 of men of genius are over 200 times more likely to be gifted with genius than are 

 those of ordinary men, and since the advance of civilisation is entirely contingent 

 upon a steady stream of impelling genius, the Community as a whole, from sheer 

 self-interest, must wish men of genius to have plenty of children, and such 

 children to have every facility for coming to the front. 



All this, however, concerns only the first half of the children question : but the 

 second half, the problem of the children begotten by either the wilfully lazy and 

 thriftless or by the mentally or morally (or physically) degenerate — this is really 

 the crux. 



In so far as such children inherit from degenerate parents a degenerate nature, 

 we have already considered them under (1 b) — but in the adult stage. Now we 

 must consider them in childhood, and must similarly take account of the some- 

 times average or indifferent, and therefore educable, children of more or less 

 degenerate parents, and of the children of merely lazy, or thriftless, or selfish, 

 parents. Anyhow, in the very nature of things, they cannot have the natural 

 advantages of the desirables' children : anyhow, Nature — that cruel heartless 

 immoral stepmother, against whom we are powerless — has treated them with 

 typically flagrant injustice : but are we acquiescently to leave the stricken by 

 Nature to their fate, or — as a Community — to undo the injustice so far as possible, 

 and incidentally to render them as serviceable members of the Community as may 

 be instead of letting them remain drags on social progress? 



To state the question thus, turning on to the sad phenomena the searchlight 

 which the study of heredity has put into our hands, is to answer it — subject to an 

 all-important proviso to be made anon. No other answer seems really possible 

 unless we can disprove such biological certainties as the study of heredity has 

 afforded, or unless we frankly wash our hands of a scientific sociology founded on 

 biology and psychology and inspired by ethics, and elect to " carry on " in the 

 weary old empirical rudderless course. 



VII 



Here, however, the philosophical Individualist sees his chance ; and very fully 

 commiserating the pitiable lot of such children, and very heartily endorsing our 

 indictment against Nature's cruelty, he yet maintains that the " Socialists " in their 

 ethical and humanitarian zeal will, in the long-run, render things worse even than 

 they already are, and that Spencerian laissez faire will really prove ultimately the 

 most merciful and least injurious course. The old and very natural and reason- 

 able objection that the industrious and thrifty man who, with much self-denial, is 

 struggling to equip his own children adequately for their course, will be victimised 

 with cruel injustice if he be heavily mulcted to assist the — admittedly luckless — 

 children of his lazy thriftless selfish neighbours — this primary objection is very 

 largely, if not completely, offset by the modern Collectivist proposals to grade 

 income-tax up to at least 75 per cent, on large incomes, to diminish the tax on 

 small incomes, and to nationalise various services, and thereby diminish expenses 



