VIRILE SENTIMENT 47 



and when the Glasgow Board of Guardians, at the 

 expense of the ratepayers, send the children of 

 reprobates, drunkards, criminals, prostitutes, and 

 general failures to be boarded out and cared for 

 among the intelligent, virtuous, and thrifty inhabi- 

 tants of the western coast of Scotland, in the implied 

 belief that they will inevitably become good citizens 

 because of the changed environment — they are 

 expanding this remarkable formula, and are en- 

 deavouring to teach the strange doctrine that sand 

 can behave as granite if only both are beaten upon 

 by the same tempestuous sea. Verily, the age of 

 fairy tales has not yet passed away ! 



This corybantic sentiment, so wildly solicitous 

 of the well-being of the civically unfit, is being 

 promulgated from every pulpit, by every newspaper, 

 by every social reformer, by every political opportu- 

 nist, and by every one of the great multitude of 

 morbid and neurotic sentimentalists. It is a phase 

 of hysteria permeating into the soul of our nation. 

 Surely the worst thing any nation can do is to concern 

 itself in frantic endeavours to save or pamper its 

 weaklings and unfit. It is dangerous to ignore 

 the clear teachings of science, that in the hereditary 

 processes there is an irrevocable coming out at one 

 end of the chain of generations of the characters 

 that go in at the other ; they come out not only as 

 they went in, but numerically increased, because 

 the individuals bearing them are multiplied in 

 geometrical progression ; they tend to spread ever 

 wider in each successive generation. That which 



