VIRILE SENTIMENT 55 



for exertion, and get no new ones in their place," and 

 ultimately they perish. 



These are considerations which should be recog- 

 nised before any endeavour is made to interfere 

 with the conditions and natures of the citizens of 

 our own communities. In the same way, but in 

 lesser degree, that the inherent qualities of a Tas- 

 manian are different from those of an Anglican 

 Bishop, so are the inherent qualities of the lower 

 social strata different from those of the upper strata 

 in civilised communities. And just as the Bishop, 

 with liis higher aspirations and nobler sentiments, 

 failed to recognise that the Tasmanian had not got 

 them, and could not be made to have them, so certain 

 well-intentioned, generous, impulsive, charitable, and 

 philanthropic persons in the higher social scale fail 

 to recognise that the aspirations and ideals of the 

 lower classes are wholly different from their own. 

 And just as with the Tasmanians, so in our own 

 social efforts, disaster and destruction will follow 

 any interference with those benign but merciless 

 processes of Nature which allow only individuals 

 adapted to their conditions to survive. The Tas- 

 manians lived the life they did because their inherent 

 desires impelled them to do so, and there was nothing 

 in their physical environment inconsistent with them. 

 But neither was there anything inconsistent in that 

 physical environment with half-a-dozen other modes 

 of living, had they chose to live them. Other 

 ways, it is conceivable, were open to them, but 

 they chose the particular one, and the only one. 



