2 MARRIAGE AND DISEASE. 



the course of Nature, and prevent, so far as is possible, 

 the operation of those laws which weed out and exter- 

 minate the abnormal, diseased, and otherwise unfit in 

 every grade of natural life. 



The beneficial working of these natural laws is to 

 be seen among savage and less civilised peoples, where 

 the mode of life is less artificial than our own that 

 is, where the animal is in more perfect accord with 

 his environment than is the case among the more 

 highly civilised communities. Even here we find the 

 unfit ; for the unfit is a variation, a pathological varia- 

 tion, and variations both pathological and physiological 

 must of necessity at times appear, even under the 

 most favourable, conditions. But when such variations 

 from the normal or healthy type do appear in natural 

 life, their survival is of brief duration. Here, there 

 is no continuance of the deformed, the crippled, and 

 the feeble. Natural selection remorselessly weeds out 

 all individuals who from any cause are unfitted to 

 their natural environment, and it is this law which 

 maintains the high standard of health which exists 

 among all savage and semi-civilised races. 



How different is this from what obtains in the 

 highly artificial life which civilised man has built up 

 or created for himself ! Here the weakling, the cripple, 

 and the diseased, who in the natural life would at once 

 succumb, are nursed and protected ; they are surrounded 

 with an artificial environment designed to render a 

 continuance of life possible, and, finally, if they be 

 endowed -with the procreative function, they are per- 



