486 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



served, can they hope to compete on equal terms with the strongest 

 members, who would alone have survived ? Is it true that the strong 

 and competent are called upon to help the feeble and incompetent, who, 

 by the marriages of the imprudent, would succumb either to compe- 

 tition, or to the action of the environment ? 



The melancholy Burton said : "A husbandman will sow none but 

 the choicest seed ; he will not rear a bull or a horse except he be right 

 shapen in all his parts, or permit him to cover a mare except he be 

 well assured of his breed." He inquires : " Quanta id diligentius iii 

 procreandis liberis observandum f And how careful, then, should we 

 be in the begetting of our children ! " Says Mr. Darwin, man scans 

 with scrupulous care the character and pedigree of his horses and cat- 

 tle before he matches them, but, when he comes to his own marriage, 

 he rarely, or never, takes any such care. By giving the feeble a bet- 

 ter chance to propagate their kind, philanthropy is only filling the 

 world with the " infirm so called, to whom philanthropy is accustomed 

 to give assistance," as well as keeping out the vigorous, who, it is 

 assumed, will give assistance to the feeble members.* The harsh re- 

 sult springing from a misguided benevolence is seen in another way. 

 If we take care of the feeble and helpless, the diseases that appear in 

 their race must be met by new remedies ; and new causes of death 

 have arisen from our philanthropic anxiety to suppress former causes 

 of mortality in the feeble. To save and keep alive the weak to-day 

 from injurious influences is to save and keep alive their descendants 

 from totally different influences to-morrow. We suffer from diseases 

 which were quite unknown to our ancestors, of the last century even. 

 The inflammatory and febrile disorders from which they suffered have 

 given place to disorders distinctly American. The neuroses, or nerv- 

 ous diseases, are doubtless intensified by the restless activity which 

 characterizes the social, political, and industrial pursuits of our people ; 

 and cerebral difficulties of many forms which appear as types of nerv- 

 vous diathesis developed by our climate and institutions have now 

 become functional.f 



It is difficult, therefore, to exaggerate the harm caused by the arti- 

 ficial preservation of the feeblest upon the physical status of future 

 generations. The great harm consists in still further separating classes, 

 and thus creating great inequalities of condition in every society. The 

 artificial preservation of the feeblest is the artificial widening of those 

 lines which Nature draws between one person and another ; it gives 

 rise to those natural differences among men which, as Mr. Galton has 



* " Descent of Man," 1880, p. 617 ; vide p. 138. 



f Compendium Tenth Census, part ii, p. 1665 : "The tendency to insanity among the 

 foreign . . . may be accounted for, etc., by the change of climate and of habits of life ; 

 by increased anxiety and effort to advance in social respectability, by home-sickness, and 

 in general by removal of props which sustain a man who docs not emigrate." Even the 

 same tendency is noticed with native-born who move, " especially from the Atlantic to 

 the Pacific coast." 



