D.^NGEES OF HUMANITARIANISM 339 



race, for a larger proportion of sickly ones are living amongst 

 us."^ But Herbert Spencer especially lias efEectively warned 

 us against the dangers of modern humanitarianism : 



" As fast as more and more detrimental agencies are removed or de- 

 creased, and as fast as there results an increasing survival and propaga- 

 tion of those having delicately balanced constitutions, there arise addi- 

 tional destructive agencies. Let the average vitaKty be diminished by 

 more effectually guarding the weak against adverse conditions, and in- 

 evitably there come fresh diseases. An average constitution previously 

 able to bear without derangement certain variations in atmospheric con- 

 ditions and certain degrees of other unfavourable actions, if lowered in 

 tone, will become subject to new kinds of perturbation and new causes 

 of death. In illustration I need but refer to the many diseases from which 

 civilised races suffer, but which are not known to the uncivilised. Nor 

 is it only thus that the rate of mortality, when artificially decreased in 

 one direction, increases in another. The very precautions against death ' 

 are themselves in some measure extra causes of death. Every further 

 appliance for meeting an evil, every additional expenditure of labour, 

 every new tax to meet the cost of supervision, becomes a fresh obstacle 

 to the hving. A society of enfeebled people, then, must lead a life like 

 that led by a society of people who had outlived their vigour, and yet 

 had none to help them, and the life also must be like in lacking that 

 vivacity which makes enjoyment keen. In proportion as energy declines, 

 not only do the causes of pain increase, but the possibilities of pleasure 

 decrease."^ 



It is assuredly a great pity that Friedrich Nietzsche is, to all 

 intents and purposes, unknown in England. The philosopher 

 who, with Schopenhauer, has exercised incontestably the greatest 

 influence on the continent of Europe during the nineteenth 

 century, the great thinker who has moved so many intellects, 

 inspired so much enthusiasm, called forth such bitter criticism — 

 this is the thinker who is contemptuously ignored in England. 

 If the dislikes of a people are any criterion of its value, this 

 ignoring of Nietzsche, so eminently typical of the coimtry of the 

 Nonconformist conscience, might be taken as a symptom of that 

 racial degeneracy and morbidity which certain writers have 



1 J. B. Haycraft, Darwinism and Race Progress, pp. 60, 61. Swan 

 Sonnenschein. 



2 The Study of Sociology, pp. 336, 337. 



22—2 



