HEREDITY AND POLITICS 129 



Fewer of the unsound lived to reach maturity, and 

 the very high infant mortality among their offspring 

 tended to weed the tainted stock out of the race. 

 Out of a family of ten or twelve, only the one or two, 

 whom the law of averages tells us may be as good 

 or better in development than their parents, could be 

 expected to survive. 



These considerations open up the broadest question 

 we have to investigate. We have already dealt with one 

 aspect of this question when considering the selective 

 action of disease. Improvements in medicine, surgery, 

 sanitation and hygiene weaken the selective action of 

 disease, and check the purification of the race from the 

 predisposition to disease. But we have seen reason to 

 hope that the compensating advantages, even from the 

 racial point of view, may be greater than the loss. 



But the amelioration in the environment due to 

 improvements in medicine and hygiene is only one 

 side of a general tendency. Misfortune and lack of 

 success of all kinds are now met with help both from 

 charity and the State in a way unknown before. We 

 hear little about the principle of least eligibility in the 

 distribution of relief. Hungry school-children are 

 fed ; unemployed labourers are supported by relief 

 works ; the sick are tended gratuitously in well- 

 appointed hospitals ; the old have pensions freely 

 given to them regardless of their previous record. As 

 Dr Tredgold has well put it : " It is impossible to 

 look round without seeing that the entire country, 

 from John o' Groats to Land's End, is flooded with 

 institutions, societies and agencies, not for the better- 



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