382 HEREDITY AND SELECTION IN SOCIOLOGY 



we enable him to reproduce his kind, the work will have to be recom- 

 menced in the next generation, and no profit whatever will have accrued 

 to society. 



Thus, altruism, as it is practised to-day, does far more harm than good. 

 If society is to be rid of its most undesirable elements, we must do one of 

 two things : either we must allow free play to the action of such selective 

 agencies as tend to eliminate unfit organisms ; or, if we diminish the action 

 of these agencies, we must take other measures with a view to ensuring 

 an identical result. Such measures, as we have seen, consist in putting a 

 check on reproduction. But altruism as it is practised to-day does none 

 of these things : it diminishes the action of selection, and takes no counter- 

 vailing measures. Its inevitable consequence must thus be an eventual 

 increase of the diseased elements of society. 



The conditions prevailing in all the populous centres of Western Europe 

 and America to-day are such as to render exceedingly problematical any 

 attempt to permanently reorganise the moral and material welfare of 

 society without a preliminary check on the reproduction of the lower 

 classes. As Professor Huxley has said, la misere reigns supreme among a 

 large and ever-increasing body of the population of all great cities in 

 Europe and America. The populous districts of large towns are an 

 admirable recruiting - ground for plague and disease, for crime and 

 pauperism, for drink and debauch. And the remedies which have been 

 tried are like drops in the Pacific Ocean. One remedy alone can be 

 efficacious, and that is to check the multiplication aUke of the class which 

 is at the bottom of the social ladder and of the stiU larger mass of people 

 on the brink of the abyss, ready to fall into it at any moment if, through 

 any unforeseen cause, there should be no demand for their produce. It is 

 notorious that the rate of multiplication of the social classes is in inverse 

 ratio to their value and fitness. ^ Foresight and prudence are con- 

 must be eliminated. It is not enough to eliminate the individual ; it 

 should be our aim to eliminate the race, and this can only be done by 

 putting an effective check on reproduction. 



Professor Maudsley has expressed the belief that when our knowledge 

 of crime and its causes has become greater we shall be actuated by more 

 benignant sentiments towards the criminal, whom we will consider in the 

 light of an irresponsible person {Responsibility in Mental Disease, p. 35). 

 We entirely agree that all those sentiments of hostiUty towards the criminal 

 which are based on the supposition that crime is the spontaneous outcome 

 of misguided free will are wholly irrational ; and it will be the duty of 

 criminological science to modify the metaphysical conception of free 

 will. But we must beware of letting benignant sentiments override the 

 necessities of social defence. If the criminal is irresponsible, he is none 

 the less a danger for society. 

 * See above, II., Chapter IV. 



