SOCIAL AND PHYSIOLOGICAL INEQUALITY. 757 



SOCIAL AND PHYSIOLOGICAL INEQUALITY. 



Br HENRY DWIGIIT CIIAi'IN, M. D., 



PROFESSOR OF CHILDREN'S DISEASES IN THE WOMAN'S MEDICAL COLLEGE OF THE NEW YORK 



INFIRMARY. 



THE subject of the hour is the social problem. Viewed in the 

 light of the pressing questions demanding settlement — questions 

 really of life and death — the new science of sociology overshadows all 

 others in importance. The air is full of the angry clamor raised by 

 different cliques and classes, all arguing from the standpoint of their 

 own interests. The strain to which society is thus subjected must be 

 relieved, if possible, by broad and unprejudiced reasoning in the line 

 of causes. In this manner only can the possibilities and limitations of 

 relief be suggested. It is evident that in the present state of society 

 many are hopelessly worsted in the effort to gain, not a competency, 

 but a moderate sustenance. Numerous irrelevant causes and cures are 

 constantly being proclaimed for this glaring evil, leaving the essential 

 causes untouched. The mutterings of discontent heard on all sides 

 have their basis largely in the belief that the fault lies in a friction re- 

 sulting from an artificial social order. Economic laws are really, at 

 bottom, the outcome of physiological laws and conditions. Assuredly, 

 laws of Nature are fundamental and must underlie economic laws ; the 

 latter may be modified, but not essentially altered by artificial social 

 relations. Certain reformers are fiercely attacking our social system 

 as the ultimate cause of misery, entirely overlooking the fact that 

 social conditions are merely the resultant and aggregate of individual 

 characteristics. As long as these remain unchanged, society may be 

 repeatedly disintegrated, but the same abuses will as regularly spring 

 up. Those who are demanding more social equality must first see to 

 it that there is more individual equality. It is a favorite corollary of 

 our political system that all men are born equal. Unfortunately, legal 

 equality is not physiological equality. In fact, there is no such thing 

 as equality. Much of the restlessness of the age is the endeavor to 

 institute formulas and laws of equality while no such real element 

 exists. Two stupendous factors are present in all life, physical as 

 well as mental — heredity and environment. These all-controlling influ- 

 ences are present, for good or evil, in varying proportions in different 

 lives. With the generation of life heredity, whose mysterious effects 

 we must recognize without understanding, has done its best or worst 

 for the beginning existence ; its potency has been in the past, acting 

 perhaps through long reaches of time. With commencing life comes 

 in the new element of environment,as the complement of heredity, to 

 enhance the evil trait, or perhaps obliterate it ; too often to sow the 

 seeds of physical and mental weakness in a constitution that was given 



