Septeubeb 24, 1900] 



aCIENCE 



401 



one or other of their chief tenets. The 

 socialist has grasped the all-importance of 

 the spirit of service, of the subordination 

 of the individual to the community. The 

 aristocrat, in theoiy at any rate, would 

 emphasize the necessity of placing the 

 ruling power in the hands of the individ- 

 uals most highly endowed with intelligence 

 and with experience in the affairs of na- 

 tions. He also appreciates the necessity of 

 complete control of all parts by the cen- 

 tral govei'nment, though in many cases the 

 sense organs which he uses for guidance 

 are the traditions of past experience rather 

 than the science of to-day. The liberal or 

 individualist asserts the necessity of giv- 

 ing to each individual equal opportunities, 

 so that there may be a free fight between 

 all individuals in which only the most 

 highly gifted will survive. It might be 

 possible for another Darwin to give us a 

 politic which would combine what is true 

 in each of these rival theories, and would 

 be in strict accord with our knowledge of 

 the history of the race and of mankind. 

 As a matter of fact the affairs of our states 

 are not determined according to any of 

 these theories, but by politicians, whose 

 measures for the conduct of the community 

 depend in the last resort on the suffrages 

 of their electors— i. e., on the favor of the 

 people as a whole. It has been rightly 

 said that every nation has the government 

 which it deserves. Hence it is all-impor- 

 tant that the people themselves should 

 realize the meaning of the message which 

 Darwin delivered fifty years ago. On the 

 choice of the people, not of its politicians, 

 on its power to foresee and to realize the 

 laws which determine success in the strug- 

 gle for existence, depends the future of 

 our race. It is the people that must elect 

 men as rulers in virtue of their wisdom 

 rather than of their promises. It is the 

 people that must insist on the provision of 



the organs of foresight, the workshops of 

 exact knowledge. It is the individual who 

 must be prepared to give up his own free- 

 dom and ease for the welfare of the com- 

 munity. 



Whether our type is the one that will' 

 give birth to the supei--man it is impossible 

 to foresee. There are, however, two alter- 

 natives before us. As incoherent units we 

 may acquiesce in an existence subordinate 

 to or parasitic on any type which may 

 happen to achieve success, or as members 

 of a great organized community we may 

 make a bid for determining the future of 

 the world and for securing the dominance 

 of our race, oi;r thoughts and ideals. 



E. H. Stabling 



VACCI'SE THERAPY A^'D lilMUXIZATION 

 Two of the great hospitals of London, as: 

 we learn from the London Times, St. Mary's, 

 at Paddington, and the Mount Vernon Hos- 

 pital for Consumption, at Hampstead and 

 Northwood, have recently issued appeals on 

 behalf of their special funds for the study and 

 practise of vaccine therapy and for the 

 further development of immunization. 



At the Mount Vernon Hospital the direc- 

 tion of the department has been committed to 

 Dr. E. W. Allen, who has been directing his 

 attention largely to affording protection 

 against catarrh and influenza, and who will be 

 applying the same principles to the treatment 

 and, it may reasonably be hoped, to the cure- 

 of the forms of tuberculosis of the lung 

 which are still confined to a somewhat limited 

 area. In these, as in tuberculosis of the joints, 

 there is every reason to expect the ultimate- 

 subjugation of the invading bacilli by the 

 natural forces evoked through the agency of 

 inoculations; but. in the one case as in the 

 other, the demand for special resources arises 

 from the fact that the application of the 

 principle involved has not yet been brought 

 within the scope of merely bedside observa- 

 tion, and must still be guided by laboratory 

 work of a kind which occupies much time and 



