THE SINS OF LEGISLATORS, 149 



And now, to carry home the conclusion that the legislator should 

 bring to his business a vivid consciousness of these and other such 

 broad truths concerning the human society with which he proposes to 

 deal, let me present somewhat more fully one of them not yet men- 

 tioned. 



The continued life of every higher species of creature depends on 

 conformity, now to one, now to the other, of two radically-opposed 

 principles. The early lives of its members and the adult lives of its 

 members have to be dealt with in contrary ways. We will contem- 

 plate them in their natural order. 



One of the most familiar facts is that animals of superior types, 

 comparatively slow in reaching maturity, are enabled, when they have 

 reached it, to give more aid to their offspring than animals of inferior 

 types. The adults foster their young during periods more or less 

 prolonged, while yet the young are unable to provide for them- 

 selves ; and it is obvious that maintenance of the species can be 

 secured only by a parental care adjusted to the need consequent on 

 imperfection. It requires no proving that the blind, unfledged hedge- 

 bird, or the young puppy even after it has acquired sight, would forth- 

 with die if it had to keep itself warm and obtain its own food. The 

 gratuitous parental aid must be great in proportion as the young one 

 is of little worth, either to itself or to others ; and it may diminish 

 as fast as, by increasing development, the young one acquires worth, 

 at first for self-sustentation, and by-and-by for sustentation of others. 

 That is to say, during immaturity, benefits received must be inversely 

 as the power or ability of the receiver. Clearly, if during this first 

 part of life benefits were proportioned to merits, or rewards to de- 

 serts, the species would disappear in a generation. 



From this regime of the family-group, let us turn to the regime of 

 that larger group formed by the adult members of the species. Ask 

 what happens when the new individual, acquiring complete use of its 

 powers and ceasing to have parental aid, is left to itself. Now there 

 comes into play a principle just the reverse of that above described. 

 Throughout the rest of its life, each adult gets benefit in proportion 

 to merit — reward in proportion to desert : merit and desert in each 

 case being understood as ability to fulfill all the requirements of life — 

 to get food, to secure shelter, to escape enemies. Placed in competi- 

 tion with members of its own species, and in antagonism with mem- 

 bers of other species, it dwindles and gets killed off, or thrives and 

 propagates, according as it is ill-endowed or well-endowed. Mani- 

 festly an opposite regime^ could it be maintained, would, in course of 

 time, be fatal to the species. If the benefits received by each member 

 of it were proportionate to its inferiority — if, as a consequence, multi- 

 plication of the inferior was furthered and multiplication of the supe- 

 rior hindered, progressive degradation would result ; and eventually 



