224 THE MENDEL JOURNAL 



But to come back to the book. Considerations of this sort 

 and many others justify us in feeUng disquieted as to the direction 

 in which the evolution of our nation is tending. We clearly cannot 

 go on restricting the birthrate of our better citizens, hampering 

 them increasingly in the struggle of life, while at the same time 

 the birthrate of the inferior stocks is rising and their deathrate 

 decreasing, and life is made easier for them by the compulsorily 

 enforced altruism of the other citizens, without some day in 

 the near future being called upon to face disaster. 



Life, no doubt, is a difficult and stern afEair. But, as the 

 authors of Family and the Nation say in a passage of 

 singular beauty : " Out of the very agony and weariness 

 of the strife, is born that social and moral sense which 

 gives to man his highest attribute and noblest reason for 

 existence." If before the goal of human perfection is reached 

 we reduce this agony and weariness, or lessen the strife, we are 

 undoing that process which raised man to his present state. But 

 notwithstanding this, as the authors are careful to point out, 

 "■ of late years, the means of keeping aUve the falhng and fallen 

 have grown with ever-increasing speed. Each advance in medical 

 skill, in knowledge of Pathology or Hygiene, each new moral 

 effect to cope with external evil, results in prolonged hfe for the 

 members of weak and unsoimd stock, and still more significant, 

 a lessened mortahty among their children. There is often an 

 inclination to deprecate the struggle for Ufe, an endeavour to 

 minimise its effects, to moum with the loser rather than to 

 rejoice with the winner." 



When we endeavour to trace the origin of this softened senti- 

 ment which is so solicitous of the defective and the weak, so 

 strangely heedless of the beauty of the strong, we are brought 

 face to face with rehgious conceptions, reUgious change, and 

 rehgious decay. In the older days, well within the memory of 

 some of us as children, the dominant conception of our reHgion 

 was that this hfe was a " probationary training ground for a 

 higher one which was to succeed it." For better or worse, this 

 conception is decaying, and no worthy ideal has taken its place. 

 The cry of resignation " Thy will be done," or of that " I am in 

 the hands of the Lord," uttered in almost every home within the 

 land, and inscribed on many tombstones, not more than forty 

 years ago, is now heard in but a few, though its inscription still 

 continues. We apparently no longer believe in that great behef, 

 carrying within it the germ of national salvation, and anticipating 

 by many centuries the biological truths of to-day : " My God, 

 " in Him will I trust. Surely He shall dehver thee from the 

 " snare of the fowler, and from the noisome pestilence. Thou 

 " shalt not be afraid for the terror by night ; nor for the arrow 



