VIRILE SENTIMENT 105 



hunger. We must not forget the recorded facts of 

 ship-wrecked and starving men casting lots for their 

 next meal, and feeding upon him whom chance had 

 marked. Neither must we forget the County Courts, 

 nor the now historical episodes of the Marshalsea. 

 " Give me the pound of flesh which is due to me, or 

 die for aught I shall care," is the general formula that 

 designates the doings of mankind, even in normal 

 times. I do not regret that it is so. I do not, in even 

 small measure, denounce Shylock. I have come to 

 recognise that the weak demand the " pound of 

 flesh " from the strong whenever they can, no less 

 than the strong demand it of the weak. Be careful, 

 therefore, philanthropists and social sentimentalists, 

 that in your frantic haste to procreate and preserve 

 the civically unfit you are not bringing into being a 

 great herd whose demand for its " pound of flesh " 

 shall be none the less emphatic because it cannot 

 earn the value of that pound, or, having earned it, 

 finds that others, stronger and fitter, have already 

 consumed it. It is a dangerous problem, this of the 

 multiplication of organisms, with that philogamic 

 passion at their rear ever unresisted, driving onwards. 

 It is dangerous even if the multiplication is that of 

 the fittest. But if for a while you shall aid the 

 maintenance and increase of the unfit and unfittest 

 it means ultimately an annihilation on a scale passing 

 beyond all comprehension and transcending all con- 

 ception. It is therefore wise to heed how far the 

 hour may be distant when by the voice of the great 

 shipwrecked herd the casting of the lot may be 



