484. THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



incapable, in the suffering of the imprudent, and in the early death of 

 the intemperate and unhealthy, there is a far-sighted benevolence. He 

 declares that, in order to escape the objections of moralists, and to 

 solve the question of public relief, Malthus had " recourse to Nature, 

 which knows neither pity nor justice ; he should have appealed to the 

 reason and freedom of man." While the accusation is not an emi- 

 nently just one, yet it showed a profound misapprehension of the real 

 nature and purpose of our modern philanthropy. The conscious aim 

 of scientific Philanthropy is, in the first place, to deal with the strug- 

 gle of man with Nature — is to help men to help themselves ; secondly, 

 its aim is to regulate the struggle of man with man — is to help men to 

 understand and adapt themselves to the conditions of existence. It is 

 commonly noticed that the individual who succeeds in his struggle 

 with Nature is apt to be successful in the good-natured struggle with 

 his fellow-men. As Darwin proves, the intemperate suffer from a 

 high rate of mortality, and the extremely profligate leave few off- 

 spring. There is economy in this process of elimination, whereby the 

 transmission of the industrial vices is restricted, and, in the competi- 

 tion of life, the degraded members of society, unable to adapt them- 

 selves to the conditions imposed by physical and social environment, 

 succumb before the rest of the population. The scientific idea of 

 benevolence involves, first, the preparation of man to receive intelli- 

 gently Nature's stern discipline — that is, to help him avoid all the 

 evils coming from disobedience of physical agencies, and also to aid 

 him in grasping those great rewards, which, as Huxley says. Nature 

 scatters with as lavish a hand as her penalties. The philanthropist 

 will show us that the hereditary vices which the parent establishes for 

 his children and his children's children meet in the long run with cer- 

 tain punishment. If we could believe in the certainty of punishment, 

 says Sir J. Lubbock, temptation, which is at the root of crime, would 

 be cut away and mankind would become more innocent. The penal- 

 ties attached to the consumptive, scrofulous, or syphylitic, in contract- 

 ing marriage, are sharp and sure — ofttimes swift and merciless. Men 

 sin from a mistaken idea of what constitutes to-day's pleasure and 

 to-morrow's pain ; and it is not pleasant to be reminded that a great 

 deal of our suffering is due more to ancestral errors than to our own. 



There is no possibility of a right understanding of the nature and 

 purpose of Philanthropy without considering the three forces which, 

 by their intricate interaction, combine to make the individual man 

 what he is, natural selection, environment, and heredity. The pro- 

 cess of elimination is nothing more nor less than the slow but steady 

 selection of those who give evidence of their better adaptation to 

 those external conditions into which they are born. No matter 

 whether individuals survive, either for their mental or for their phys- 

 ical vigor, these qualities, for which they are selected, once gained and 

 afterward enhanced by increased selection and heredity, become the 



