DEGENERATION IN MAN. 73 



children, and stimulating them to self-activity ; cut- 

 ting off the root tentacles, and making parasites self- 

 helpful, or confining them that the generation may 

 cease. Slums a culture-basis for moral and physical 

 disease. Make parasitism the hardest mode of life and 

 the most active. Sicily. Venice. Climatic effects. 



The duty of charity to save the unfortunate ; to 

 permit those incapable by heredity to become extinct 

 with the least possible suffering. Good and evil of 

 pension systems. 



No way to make humanity happier, except to make 

 humanity stronger and better. If humanity has some- 

 thing to do, and does it with a pride in its work, it 

 will be reasonably happy. Train those we have, and 

 let heredity repeat the best, and not the worst. Slums 

 breed slums ; idlers and criminals are not the stock 

 from which the men of the future may spring. 



Charity consists in making men better adapted 

 to environment, not in easing up the environment 

 around individual men. "What shall we do with 

 John Jones ? " What did we do with Tom Huxley, 

 or Mike Faraday ? 



" Whatever begot the charitable impulse in the first 

 place, it survived because it was useful." Warner. 

 Survival of people and races with altruistic sentiments 

 " a sufficient answer to those who object to all philan- 

 thropic undertakings as mischievous meddling with 

 the benign course of Nature." " Why not be brutal ? " 

 Because brutality is barbarous ; brutality is expensive. 

 Why not let the vicious and profligate, the dirty and 

 the diseased, exterminate themselves ? Because gan- 

 grene is not a profitable caustic. " Social cancers in- 



