SPONTANEOUS DEGRADATION OF CULTURE 473 



ourselves to them, but rather that we may bark our knuckles and batter 

 our heads in an effort to oppose them. There is a law of supply and demand 

 in Nature, and we appoint commissions whose duty it is to strive to render 

 it inactive by the regulation of prices. There is a law of the survival of the 

 fittest, and if any individual among us shows himself unfit by reason of heredity 

 or the accidents of his own existence, we foster and nurse him and keep him 

 alive, but the fit we send to war or leave unaided in the fell clutch of cir- 

 cumstance. There is in Nature a law of the spontaneous degradation of 

 culture, and we bend our efforts toward hastening the accomplishment of its 

 operation. We organise and prohibit and regulate — and shut off culture at 

 the source of supply. I point out the facts — but will not moralise. To urge 

 here against the suicide of culture would be anarchy. 



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