I PROLEGOMENA 39 



is very small; and, generally, the hereditary 

 criminal and the hereditary pauper have propa 

 gated their kind before the law affects them. 

 In a large proportion of cases, crime and pauper 

 ism have nothing to do with heredity ; but 

 are the consequence, partly, of circumstances 

 and, partly, of the possession of qualities, which, 

 under different conditions of life, might have 

 excited esteem and even admiration. It was a 

 shrewd man of the world who, in discussing sewage 

 problems, remarked that dirt is riches in the 

 wrong place ; and that sound aphorism has moral 

 applications. The benevolence and open-handed 

 generosity which adorn a rich man, may make a 

 pauper of a poor one ; the energy and courage to 

 which the successful soldier owes his rise, the cool 

 and daring subtlety to which the great financier 

 owes his fortune, may very easily, under unfavour 

 able conditions, lead their possessors to the 

 gallows, or to the hulks. Moreover, it is fairly 

 probable that the children of a ' failure ' will re 

 ceive from their other parent just that little 

 modification of character which makes all the 

 difference. I sometimes wonder whether people, 

 who talk so freely about extirpating the unfit, 

 ever dispassionately consider their own history. 

 Surely, one must be very ' fit,' indeed, not to know 

 of an occasion, or perhaps two, in one's life, when 

 it would have been only too easy to qualify for 

 a place among the ' unfit.' 



