XIII 



EXTENSIONS OF DARWINISM 285 



This view of the purport, the meaning, and the higher 

 function of the great and varied life-world brings us by a 

 different route to what many of our better thinkers and 

 teachers have tried to impress upon us — that our great 

 cities are the " wens," the disease-products of humanity, 

 and that until they are abolished there can be no approach 

 to a true or rational civilisation. 



This was the teaching of that true and far-seeing child 

 of nature, William Cobbett ; it is the teaching of all our 

 greatest sanitarians ; it is the teaching of Nature herself 

 in the comparative rural and urban death-rates. Yet we 

 have no legislator, no minister, who will determinedly set 

 himself to put an end to the continued growth of these 

 " wens " ; which are wholly and absolutely evil. I will, there- 

 fore, take this opportunity of showing kow it can be done. 



There is much talk now of what will and must be the 

 growth of London during the next twenty or fifty years ; 

 and of the necessity of bringing water from Wales to supply 

 the increased population. But where is the necessity ? Why 

 provide for a population which need never have existed, and 

 whose coming into existence will be an evil and of no 

 possible use to any human beings except the landowners and 

 speculators who will make money by the certain injury of 

 their fellow-citizens ? If the House of Commons and the 

 London County Council are not the bond-slaves of the land- 

 owners and speculators, they have only to refuse to allow 

 any further water-supply to be provided for London except 

 what now exists, and London will cease to grow. Let 

 every speculator have to provide water for and on his own 

 estate, and the thing will be done — to the enormous benefit 

 of humanity. 



The same thing can, I presume, be done by Parliament 

 for any other growing town or city. It can justly say : 

 " When you have not a gallon of polluted water in your 

 town, and when its death-rate is brought down to the 

 average standard of rural areas, we will reconsider the ques- 

 tion of your further growth." By that time, probably, there 

 will be no public demand for enlarging our " wens " and a 

 very strong and stern one for their cure or their abolition. 



