i8o HEREDITY AND SOCIETY 



issue, inflicts on those who seem least able to bear 

 the burden. If there is any meaning behind such 

 phrases as the " brotherhood of man," the " spirit of 

 humanity," it seems impossible to stand by and watch 

 another human being fall and sink under his load 

 without at least trying to lend a helping hand. The 

 less he is responsible for his own failure, the more, on 

 the surface, does it appear necessary to relieve him of 

 the consequences thereof. Yet much of the help given 

 can be shown to produce greater failure and to lead to 

 lower depths of misery. Are we to deny expression 

 to our better instincts ; or are we deliberately to 

 increase the amount of degradation in the world 

 by allowing those better instincts unregulated to have 

 their way ? What is the way out of our dilemma ? 



A very great part of the problem turns on the value 

 we attach to suffering as an essential factor in human 

 development, or as a necessary stimulus to human 

 activity; and this again involves the question of what 

 we mean by human development, and whether we 

 consider that human development is an affair of the 

 individual only during a transient lifetime, for which 

 all responsibility ceases when life comes to an end. 

 Here we are led further back, and, to answer our first 

 question, we are obliged to find a reply to the eternal 

 queries, Is the visible life we see really isolated in time 

 and space ? is it not in reality but a transient manifesta- 

 tion of a greater and permanent whole ? Does life, 

 even individual life, ever come to an end ? May not 

 suffering in the body during an earthly existence 

 receive its interpretation in some spiritual state, for 

 which indeed it is a form of preparation and purifica- 



