MEDICAL SELECTION. 173 



diseases for many years. Such ravaging evils as consump- 

 tion, scrofula, syphilis, and also many forms of mental dis- 

 orders, are transmitted by inheritance to a, great extent, 

 and transferred by sickly parents to some of their children, 

 or even to the whole of their descendants. Now, the longer 

 the diseased parents, with medical assistance, can drag on 

 their sickly existence, the more numerous are the descend- 

 ants who will inherit incurable evils, and the greater will 

 be the number of individuals, again, in the succeeding gene- 

 ration, thanks to that artificial "medical selection" who 

 will be infected by their parents with lingering, hereditary 

 disease. 



If any one were to venture the proposal, after the ex- 

 amples of the Spartans and Kedskins, to kill, immediately 

 upon their birth, all miserable, crippled children to whom 

 with certainty a sickly life could be prophesied, instead of 

 keeping them in life injurious to them and to the race, 

 our so-called "humane civilization" would utter a cry of 

 indignation. But the same "humane civilization" thinks 

 it quite as it should be, and accepts without a murmur, that 

 at the outbreak of every war (and in the present state of 

 civilized life, and in the continual development of standing 

 armies, wars must naturally become more frequent) hundreds 

 and thousands of the finest men, full of youthful vigour, are 

 sacrificed in the hazardous game of battles. The same 

 " humane civilization " at present praises the abolition of 

 capital punishment as a " liberal measure ! " And yet 

 capital punishment for incorrigible and degi^aded criminals 

 is not only just, but also a benefit to the better portion of 

 mankind ; the same benefit is done by destroying luxuriant 



weeds, for the prosperity of a well cultivated garden. As 

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