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words, the slightest deviation from the now fully recognised duty 
of the community to care for those who are chronically disabled, 
when too poor to maintain themselves, would rehabilitate 
indifference to human suffering and render valueless the unselfish 
labours of centuries. Nay more, the brutalities common to past 
times would again disgrace humanity, and animalism would sub- 
jugate civilisation. And yet, while cheerfully and even thankfully 
accepting as a bounden duty this care for the individual by 
society, there is some danger of drifting into sentimentalism, 
and of perpetuating by unreasoning tendencies diseases which 
well directed firmness of treatment would soon eradicate. To 
destroy human life, to neglect making provision for the suffering 
and the weak is simply unthinkable ; but it is a cruel wrong to 
ourselves and in a much greater degree to posterity, to allow 
unrestricted sexual intercourse, as at present, in many cases of 
inherited or acquired disease. An enlightened private or public 
conscience would by repressive measures, judiciously applied, 
make short work of many dreadful and prevalent disorders, while 
treating with every possible tenderness and care the victims of 
their own or their progenitors’ follies. 
I am fully aware that in discussing this subject 1 am treading 
upon what, in cant phraseology, is termed delicate ground. In 
the name of all that is honest, it is extremely desirable that we 
‘ should shake ourselves free from a disinclination to accept actual 
facts, and prepare ourselves to probe to their sources our social 
sores. 
A complete history—from the dawn of civilisation to the 
present time—of the treatment of the sick and helpless, and of 
the feeble in mind and body, would throw an intense light upon 
the previous pathway of human progress. Much valuable 
information would be obtained and a thoroughly scientific—as 
opposed to the present empirical and emotional—method of 
coping with hereditary and other diseases might eventually be 
found. Time would fail me to sketch, even in bare outline, this 
* strange, eventful history.”’ 
Some faint idea of the great gulf which separates modern 
from ancient thought—anent the sanctity of human life—may 
be gained from the old maxim that ‘it is happy to die when 
there is more ill than good in living,” and that ‘ to preserve life 
to our own torment and inconvenience is contrary to the very 
rules of nature.” The oncoming of Christianity swept away by 
a larger generalisation this dictum of the Stoics, and—to use the 
expressive words of Thomas Carlyle—‘“ the worship of sorrow” 
has ever found it possible to treat ‘ the search for happiness with 
contempt and instead thereof find blessedness.”’ 
Many desultory efforts to ameliorate human conditions were 
made during the middle ages, but it was not until towards the 
