THE FACULTY OF SPEECH. 793 



weakly, as the lower animals commonly, but not universally, treat the 

 sick and weakly of their own kind.* 



There is, however, another view of this question which should not 

 be overlooked. "While human beings in civilized countries manifest, 

 and always have manifested, more or less sympathy with the physically 

 afflicted, their steadfast aim has been to get rid of physical evil in all 

 its forms. No care that is taken of the sick has for its object the per- 

 petuation of sickness, but rather its extirpation. "We do not put idiots 

 to death ; but when an idiot dies there is a general feeling of relief 

 that so imperfect an existence has come to an end. "Were idiots per- 

 mitted to marry, the sense of decency of the whole community would 

 be outraged. Public opinion blames those who marry knowing that 

 there is some serious taint in their blood ; and commends, on the other 

 hand, those who abstain from, or defer, marriage on that account. 

 There is probably room for a further development of sentiment in this 

 direction. We need to feel more strongly that all maladies and ail- 

 ments are in their nature preventable, inasmuch as they all flow from 

 definite physical antecedents. As long as our views on this subject 

 are tinged in the smallest degree with supematuralism, so long will 

 our efforts to track disease to its lair and breeding-grounds be but half- 

 hearted. How can we venture to check abruptly, or at all, the course 

 of a sickness sent expressly for our chastisement ? Is it for us to say 

 when the rod has been sufficiently applied ? How do we dare to for- 

 tify ourselves in advance against disease, as if to prevent the Almighty 

 from dealing with us according to our deserts ? "We vaccinate for 

 small-pox, we drain for malaria, we cleanse and purify for cholera, we 

 ventilate and disinfect, we diet and we exercise — and all for what ? 

 Precisely to avoid the paternal chastenings which we have been taught 

 are so good for us, and the origin of which has always been attributed 

 by faith to the Divine pleasure. Evidently our views are undergoing 

 a change. "We all wish to be fit to survive, and all more or less believe 

 that it is in our power to be so and to help others to be so. "We be- 

 lieve in sanitary science, and, if we attribute any purpose in the mat- 

 ter to the Divine mind, it is that all men should come to the knowl- 

 edge of the truth, as revealed by a study of Nature, and live. 



THE FACULTY OF SPEECH.f 



By E. F. brush, M. D. 



Tl"NTnj the beginning of this nineteenth century, the mind was 



v-J considered as a unit. Early in the century. Gall, a distinguished 



German physician, noted the fact that those students whose super- 



• See Romanes, " Animal Intelligence," pp. 471, 476, as to the sympathy exhibited by 

 the monkey tribe toward their sick. 



f Read at a meeting of the Mount Vernon Athena5um, January 24, 1888. 



