RATIONAL LIFE 297 



with recognised laws of heredity. Physical differences 

 appear in the human family in like manner, according 

 to parentage. There is more than analogy here ; it is 

 a case of homology. Yet there is no one who suggests 

 that the human family is on this account to be treated 

 like the animals. We have had such dreams ; they 

 have even come down to us from an age prior to the 

 Christian era, a product of Greek thought, in the 

 midst of its own grievous perplexities. Eutopian is 

 the most gentle and merciful criticism in dealing with 

 them. We have our statistics from domestication in 

 abundance ; we have in like manner our statistics of 

 juvenile crime, with traces of inheritance. Our treat 

 ment of these two sets of figures shows how naturally, 

 and with what force of reason, we distinguish between 

 them. We recognise that the first applies to organism 

 alone ; that the second applies to a life in which mind 

 and body are united, therefore we attempt to eradicate 

 the evil. In the animal, inheritance is fixed, eradica 

 tion is impossible, so that the rule must be to sell 

 stock, and to buy in fresh stock. In the other case 

 we neither shut up the young criminal, nor send him 

 beyond the seas, nor execute him, but send him to a 

 reformatory school, in hope of bringing him back to 

 an honourable place in society. This is our witness 

 to our recognition of two natures in one life. The 

 results of our juvenile reformatory system prove 

 the accuracy of our view. Such an illustration will 

 suffice to show that deterioration signifies two quite 

 distinct things, as it appears in animal life or in 

 human; always remembering that animal life is in 

 cluded within the human, and may involve physical 

 taint for human organism, as for the sheep. 



