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Society says: “I will take care of your life, no one shall hurt 
you. I will take care of your property, you need make no effort in 
its defence.’”’ The manlier virtues disappear. Society is for the weak, 
not for the strong. Men become more and more dependent. ‘Towns 
and great cities arise. But great cities are the destruction of the 
race. The conditions of a healthy life are absent from the excited 
mart, the bustling street, the crowded tenement. No society can 
progress without a leisured class; that is to say, without that 
wealth, that reserve of potential energy of which capital is the 
embodiment. But wealth that brings such aids to progress is 
also an agent of destruction. The forces which create are those 
which destroy, The wealth which at one time may be invigorat- 
ing in excess may corrupt. Comforts at first occasional become 
habitual. Luxuries become necessities. Pleasure becomes one of 
the main objects of existence. Education creates ideals which 
can never be realized, wants which can never be satisfied. Society 
creates in its midst a proletariat, not of labour and drudgery, but 
an intellectual proletariat, restless, dissatisfied, which chafes under 
any control, seeks to break all the bonds which hold society 
together, and rejects all commandments. 
Again, progress in civilization implies those finer feelings, that 
more delicate sympathy which regards the sufferings and the 
wants of others, that humanitarianism which sustains the falling, 
feeds the hungry, and provides for the maimed and wounded in 
the battle of life. But every imbecile, every improvident, every 
unthrifty thus maintained at the expense of the community, is a 
tax on the energies of the strong, the industrious, and the healthy. 
You have saved, by your rates, or your contributions, a life of 
little or no value to the community, but you have made life 
harder, you have brought death nearer, to the very individuals by 
which the best life of the community is maintained. 
“* Owing to these general causes,’’ says Mr. Francis Gelton, in 
reviewing certain questions bearing on heredity, ‘‘ there is a steady 
check in an old civilization in the fertility of the abler classes— 
the improvident and the unambitious are those which chiefly keep 
up the breed, so the race gradually degenerates, becoming with 
each successive generation less fitted for a high civilization, 
although it retains the external appearance of one; until the time 
comes when the whole political and social fabric caves in, and a 
greater or less relapse towards barbarism takes place. 
