SOCIAL AND PHYSIOLOGICAL INEQUALITY. 763 



clown in unscrupulous sharpness with lacking moral sense, society 

 would be in a condition of more stable equilibrium. No radical altera- 

 tion in social order will be possible until human nature has slowly 

 been prepared for it by a corresponding alteration. Social reconstruc- 

 tion must be preceded by a reconstruction of man's nature. Has 

 modern society, then, nothing to answer for? Can it calmly point to 

 the inexorable laws of evolution as responsible for social wrongs? 

 Assuredly not. Society must be held in a measure responsible for the 

 crippling environment of so many of its members. The labor that is 

 treated as a pure commodity, to be purchased in the lowest market, 

 will be apt to sink to that level. The manufacturer sees in the excess- 

 ive division of labor a way to quick profits ; hence even pins must be 

 made, from head to point, by different artisans. This plan may produce 

 sharp pins, but it makes dull men, whose children will probably be 

 duller yet. 



Trades-unions and labor organizations sin more in this respect, 

 however, than the greediest capitalists. The leaders by sternly re- 

 pressing all efforts of the men to better their condition, by checking 

 all ambition to become skillful, by stopping apprentices from learn- 

 ing trades, and by striving to produce a general level of remunera- 

 tion, are reducing laborers to the condition of slaves. 



Modern industrial civilization is adapted to make the sharp sharper 

 and the dull duller, which is only another way of saying concentration 

 of wealth and diffusion of poverty. Society should strive to atone 

 for its fearful inequalities, not by division and almsgiving, but by 

 strengthening the weak for more successful effort. It must aid the 

 poor and unfortunate by giving them a chance to help themselves. 

 Giving to charities is esteemed generous ; it is a truer generosity for 

 the keen man of affairs not to ruinously undersell his less acute neigh- 

 bor and thus perhaps force him to depend on charity. Above all. no 

 social relief that is not based upon essential causes can be permanently 

 successful. Social reformation that is not in harmony with the under- 

 hung laws of Nature will always be a failure. It must follow in the 

 lines indicated by a logical study of the sciences of biology, physiol- 

 ogy, and even of pathology. Social law must conform to natural law. 

 All artificial adjustments only complicate existing troubles in leaving 

 untouched the real causes of these troubles. If several men are in a 

 boat that capsizes, all will struggle to reach the shore, but the man 

 who can not swim will sink, although all the legislatures of the world 

 forbid death by drowning. He sinks in obedience to a natural law, 

 attraction of gravitation, the operation of which, to his destruction, 

 he is not expert enough to avoid in an unaccustomed environment. 

 If society will prevent such accidents, it must do it in the natural 

 way of strengthening its members and teaching them how to swim, 

 plainly showing the possible consequences of such a neglect, and not 

 by issuing fiats against misfortune. This is the natural as distin- 



