150 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



the species, as a whole, would fail to hold its ground in presence of 

 antagonistic species and competing species. 



The broad fact, then, here to be noted, is that Nature's modes of 

 treatment inside the family-group and outside the family-group are 

 diametrically opposed to one another ; and that the intrusion of either 

 mode into the sphere of the other would be fatal to the species, either 

 immediately or remotely. 



Does any one think that the like does not hold of the human spe- 

 cies ? He can not deny that within the human family, as within any 

 inferior family, it would be fatal to proportion benefit to merit. Can 

 he assert that outside the family, among adults, there should not be 

 proportioning of benefit to merit ? Will he contend that no mischief 

 will result if the lowly endowed are enabled to thrive and multiply as 

 much as, or more than, the highly endowed ? A society of men, 

 standing toward other societies in relations of either antagonism or 

 competition, may be considered as a species, or, more literally, as a 

 variety of a species ; and it must be true of it as of other species or 

 varieties, that it will be unable to hold its own in the struggle with 

 other societies, if it disadvantages its superior units that it may advan- 

 tage its inferior units. Surely none can fail to see that were the prin- 

 ciple of family life to be adopted and fully carried out in social life — 

 were reward always great in proportion as desert was small — fatal 

 results to the society would quickly follow ; and, if so, then even a 

 partial intrusion of the family regime into the regime of the state will 

 be slowly followed by fatal results. Society in its corporate capacity 

 can not, without immediate or remote disaster, interfere with the play 

 of these opposed principles under which every species has reached such 

 fitness for its mode of life as it possesses, and under which it maintains 

 that fitness. 



I say advisedly — society in its corporate capacity : not intending 

 to exclude or condemn aid given to the inferior by the superior in 

 their individual capacities. Though, when given so indiscriminately 

 as to enable the inferior to multiply, such aid entails mischief ; yet in 

 the absence of aid given by society, individual aid, more generally 

 demanded than now, and associated with a greater sense of responsi- 

 bility, would, on the average, be given with the effect of fostering the 

 unfortunate worthy rather than the innately unworthy : there being 

 always, too, the concomitant social benefit arising from culture of the 

 sympathies. But all this may be admitted while asserting that the 

 radical distinction between family-ethics and state-ethics must be 

 maintained ; and that, while generosity must be the essential principle 

 of the one, justice must be the essential principle of the other — a rigor- 

 ous maintenance of those normal relations among citizens under which 

 each gets in return for his labor, skilled or unskilled, bodily or mental, 

 as much as is proved to be its value by the demand for it : such re- 

 turn, therefore, as will enable him to thrive and rear offspring in pro- 



