SCIENTIFIC PHILANTHROPY, 487 



shown, are greater than many ever suspect. From Rousseau's dis- 

 course on the Origin and Grounds of Inequality among Men, down to 

 the writings of Henry George, this condition in society is looked upon 

 as the root of all our social evils. The philosophy of common social- 

 ism aims at equality in all things, but fails of realization because men 

 are bom unequal in everything. To make out a case against Mr. 

 Darwin and his " partisans," M. Fouill^e claims they insist that no 

 deformed or weakly child deserves to survive, but they say, " Woe 

 to the weak ! " and " the Spartan method of disposing of feeble chil- 

 dren will be that of the perfect sociology." Such an accusation and 

 its utter absurdity deserve hardly passing reproof. Mr. Darwin ex- 

 pressly argues that, if it were intentionally to neglect the weak and 

 helpless, it could only be for a contingent benefit, with an over- 

 whelming present evil. What Mr. Spencer claims, and what is claimed 

 in behalf of scientific philanthropy, is simply to regulate, by healthy 

 and moral modes, the increase of the improvident on the means of 

 subsistence ; and this the true philanthropist will do by teaching the 

 laws of health, by right physical education, and by wise sanitary 

 measures. So insalutary are the conditions of the environment of the 

 poor in the cities, that only by fitting themselves to unfavorable con- 

 ditions is life worth living. This civic population suffer from zymotic 

 diseases due to overcrowding ; their drinking-waters, laden with the 

 germs of parasites and fevers, if they do not beget febrile disorders, 

 generate diseases of the liver and spleen ; while goitre and thyroid 

 from limestone waters, and pellagra and ophthalmia show themselves 

 at the first favorable opportunity. Poverty always tends to be sickly, 

 because it is continually exposed to the attacks of unhealthy influences. 

 The surroundings during confinement exercise a potent influence upon 

 fcetal nutrition. The Greeks were solicitous in having the female 

 surrounded by symmetrical works of art, but in the upper rooms of 

 the tenement there is no place for the Lares and Penates, 



Philanthropy does not have to deal alone with poverty and im- 

 providence and its attendant evils. To be bom rich and feeble is as 

 bad a fate as to be bom poor and capable. There is a kind of material 

 success which, when it destroys men's finer moral and intellectual fac- 

 ulties, is a greater curse than the worst kind of hardship. " The chief 

 advantage of poverty as a sanitary or hygienic force," says Dr. Beard, 

 " is that in some natures it inspires the wish and supplies the capacity 

 to escape from it, and in the long struggle we acquire the power and 

 the ambition for something higher and nobler than wealth ; the im- 

 pulse of the rebound sends us farther than we had dreamed." Baron 

 Niebuhr was the first to observe that the wealthy Roman families 

 were short-lived, and perished from the effects of luxury and ease ; 

 and the same has been done by Mr. Freeman in English history. The 

 Cffisars, the Yalois, the Bourbons, and the English lords, either from 

 vice, idleness, or impotence, were doomed to family extinction. The 



