THE PURPOSE OF LIFE 183 



suffering as best we may, bearing in mind the traditional 

 practice of the founder of the Christian religion, which 

 was, not to mitigate, but to cure. 



Herein lies the justification of many of our social 

 customs and enactments ; herein may be found the 

 germ of other developments yet to come. As long 

 as we believe that a man may be improved by social 

 pressure or deterred by individual punishment, it is 

 right to allow these agencies to proceed, provided that 

 pressure does not lead to suffocation nor punishment 

 to disablement. Where there is neither chance of 

 improvement nor hope of correction, we must devise 

 other methods of treatment. The segregation of the 

 feeble-minded in farm colonies, the detention, not 

 necessarily under penal conditions, of the hopeless 

 criminal, the lunatic and the unemployable, are among 

 the obvious ways in which we can prevent the further 

 degradation of the race, and arrest the increase in the 

 volume of suffering without cruelty to any individual, 

 restricting only in directions where the moral sense 

 has fallen below the level of humanity and is akin to 

 that of the brute beasts, who have no understanding. 



It is among the tragic accompaniments of existence , 

 that so many people should be called into life who 

 are unfitted to play any worthy part therein. It is 

 perhaps even more tragic that the best endeavours 

 of the best intentioned people should so often serve 

 only to increase the number thereof. It is only when 

 we come to have a nearer acquaintance with the con- 

 stitution and working of Nature, when we begin to 

 realize the possibility of the infinity of variations and 

 combinations which she holds within, that we under- 



