PRIVATE RELIEF OF THE POOR. 315 



Under present circumstances the difficulty seems almost insur- 

 mountable. By the law-established and privately established 

 agencies, coercive and voluntary, which save the bad from the 

 extreme results of their badness, there have been produced un- 

 manageable multitudes of them, and to prevent further multipli- 

 cation appears next to impossible. The yearly accumulating 

 appliances for keeping alive those who will not do enough work 

 to keep themselves alive, continually increase the evil. Each 

 new effort to mitigate the penalties on improvidence, has the 

 inevitable effect of adding to the number of the improvident. 

 Whether assistance is given through State-machinery, or by 

 charitable societies, or privately, it is difficult to see how it can 

 be restricted in such manner as to prevent the inferior from be- 

 getting more of the inferior. 



If left to operate in all its sternness, the principle of the sur- 

 vival of the fittest, which, as ethically considered, we have seen to 

 imply that each individual shall be left to experience the effects 

 of his own nature and consequent conduct, would quickly clear 

 away the degraded. But it is impracticable with our present sen- 

 timents to let it operate in all its sternness. No serious evil 

 would result from relaxing its operation, if the degraded were 

 to leave no progeny. A short-sighted beneficence might be al- 

 lowed to save them from suffering, were a long-sighted bene- 

 ficence assured that there would be born no more such. But 

 how can it be thus assured? If, either by public action or by 

 private action, aid were given to the feeble, the unhealthy, the 

 deformed, the stupid, on condition that they did not marry, the 

 result would manifestly be a great increase of illegitimacy; 

 which, implying a still more unfavorable nurture of children, 

 would result in still worse men and women. If instead of a 

 "submerged tenth" there existed only a submerged fiftieth, it 

 might be possible to deal with it effectually by private industrial 

 institutions, or some kindred appliances. But the mass of effete 

 humanity to be dealt with is so large as to make one despair ; the 

 problem seems insoluble. 



Certainly, if solvable, it is to be solved only through suffering. 

 Having, by unwise institutions, brought into existence large num- 

 bers who are unadapted to the requirements of social life, and are 

 consequently sources of misery to themselves and others, we can 

 not repress and gradually diminish this body of relatively worth- 

 less people without inflicting much pain. Evil has been done 

 and the penalty must be paid. Cure can come only through afflic- 

 tion. The artificial assuaging of distress by State-appliances, is 

 a kind of social opium-eating, yielding temporary mitigation at 

 the eventual cost of intenser misery. Increase of the anodyne 

 dose inevitably leads by and by to increase of the evil ; and the 



