-SOCIAL EVOLUTION 251 



becomes more and more acute for we are attempting 

 an impossibility, the result of which is more hospitals- 

 generations, by this artificial selection cannot in itself be doubted, and 

 is sufficiently proved by many well-known facts. 



" The opposite of this artificial selection of the wild Redskins and 

 the ancient Spartans is seen in the individual selection which is 

 practised in modern civilized countries, by the advances of medical 

 science in our day. Although still little able really to cure internal 

 diseases, yet medical men possess and practise more than they used to 

 do the art of prolonging life during lingering, chronic diseases for 

 many years. Such ravaging evils as consumption, scrofula, syphilis, 

 and also many forms of mental disorders, are transmitted by in- 

 heritance to a great extent, and transferred by sickly parents to some 

 of their children, or even to the whole of their descendants. Now, 

 the longer the diseased parents, with medical assistance, can drag on 

 their sickly existence, the more numerous are the descendants who 

 will inherit incurable evils, and the greater will be the numbsr of 

 individuals, again, in the succeeding generation, thanks to that 

 artificial ' medical selection, 1 who will be infected by their parents 

 with lingering, hereditary disease. 



" A more dangerous and injurious form of selection even than 

 medical selection, is that momentous process which we term ' clerical 

 selection,' and which is practised by all powerful and united 

 hierarchies. In every country where a centralized clerical body has 

 exercised its destructive influence for centuries upon the education of 

 the young, upon family life, and thus upon the principal foundations 

 of the national life, the sad consequences of this demoralizing ' clerical 

 selection ' are distinctly evident in the decay of culture and morality. 

 We need only look at Spain, at this ' most Christian ' land in Europe ! 

 It is most obvious that the highest development of the power of the 

 Roman Catholic Church, during the Middle Ages, coincides with the 

 lowest decline of scientific inquiry and of morality in general." . . . 



" In the same way as by a careful rooting out of weeds, light, air, 

 and ground is gained for good and useful plants in like manner, 

 by the indiscriminate destruction of all incorrigible criminals,* not only 



* This is a bald statement of fact ; it must not be supposed that 

 the author recommends such drastic measures, neither does it appear 

 that Prof. Haeckel does so. Like results can be obtained by more 

 humane methods. 



