150 HOMO V. DARWI5f. 



and mothers would strive to kill their fertile daughters ; 

 and no one would think of interfering !" What is this but 

 to tell us that there is no stable and unchanging rule of 

 duty ; that our notions of right and wrong are merely the 

 result of the conditions under which we have lived, and 

 would, under other conditions, be entirely different from 

 what they are ; nay, that we might have been so reared that 

 family murder would be a " sacred duty," and that a mother 

 would be fulfilling her highest moral and social obligations 

 in taking the life of her hapless babe ! 



It is easy to see how such sentiments may be abused, and 

 how, under the stimulus of such Malthusian notions as 

 Mr. Darwin has imbibed, and on which, indeed, his book 

 is largely based, a more convenient mode of getting rid of 

 our surplus population, or preventing its increase, might be 

 advocated and introduced. Mr. Darwin seems darkly to 

 hint at something of the kind when he tells us how, among 

 " savages, the weak in body and mind are soon eliminated," 

 that is — to express it in plain English — hilled off, if not by 

 murder, by cruelty and neglect ; while those who " survive 

 commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health ;" that we 

 civilized men " check the process of elimination " by our 

 asylums, hospitals, poor laws, medical skill, vaccination, 

 &c. ; that " thus the weak members of civilized society 

 propagate their kind ;" that, "except in the case of man 

 himself, hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow his worst 

 animals to breed ;" and that all this is " highly injurious 

 to the race of man ! " 



Such were formerly the private sentiments of Mr. Darwin. 

 They are now his advanced opinions — the scientific teaching 

 which he offers to the British public — the new and better 

 light which he has discovered by his life-long studies of 

 animal existence, and which he holds up to guide us into a 



