SOCIAL AND PHYSIOLOGICAL INEQUALITY. 759 



for existence. The dirt and discomfort, in the midst of which thou- 

 sands live at our very doors, would astound many among the better 

 classes who are always wondering at the shiftlessness of the poor. A 

 suggestive paper was read before the British Medical Association in 

 1885, showing the large influence that bodily comfort has in lowering 

 the death-rate. The same influences that can increase mortality among 

 the poor are also operative in curtailing their efficiency and usefulness. 

 2. Unequal Mental Development. — Some of our modern ma- 

 terialistic philosophers would have us believe that mind is a function 

 of body — a sort of secretion of the brain. While this bald conception 

 will not commend itself to many, it certainly is true that mind acts 

 through nervous organization, the integrity of which stands in a direct 

 relation to the most efficient mental manifestation. In the physical 

 growth of man a completely developed brain is the highest type of 

 organization. The normal action of the mind is much modified by the 

 health or disease of the nervous elements, which are constantly affected 

 by the condition of the vital organs. As a rule, therefore, an efficient 

 mind is an accompaniment of a well-acting body. It is true that 

 brute strength is frequently seen accompanied by signs of only inferior 

 mental life, but in such cases the evolution of the higher nerve-cen- 

 ters, together with proper education of the mind, has been in abeyance 

 for generations, with resulting stagnation. In the intensely close com- 

 petitions of the present day a certain mental acumen is absolutely 

 necessary to attain any measure of success. The man who has not the 

 mental equipment to figure a close bargain will as inevitably succumb 

 to the one who can, as the bird with the longest beak or strongest claw 

 will vanquish its weaker antagonist. The physically and mentally 

 weak inevitably yield before the law of the survival of the fittest in 

 our modern civilization. This law may be more immediately apparent 

 in its action on physical than on mental life, yet it is as real in one as 

 in the other sphere. Hereditary taint and bad hygienic surroundings 

 produce in many such a condition of weak lungs as to develop, by the 

 ordinary and necessary exposure of life, the disease known as con- 

 sumption. Death results, and such people die because their lungs are 

 not fit, or strong enough, to survive in the conditions of their environ- 

 ment. Our dispensaries and hospitals are now crowded with such un- 

 fortunates who are bound to succumb, sooner or later, to this unerring 

 natural law. Persons with vigorous lungs, who can do the world's 

 work and thrive under conditions that destroyed the former class, are 

 living examples of a physical survival of the fittest. But there is just 

 as much a mental as a physical exemplification of this law. The dull 

 wit can not be made to accomplish that which is easily done by the 

 acute mind — can not live the same life. A man who digs a canal 

 must, in order to do the only thing within his capacity for earning a 

 living, become the tool of the mentally " fitter " man — the engineer — 

 who has the intellectual skill to plan such a work. Disgusted at his 



