288 FOOT-NOTES TO EVOLUTION. 
the black belt of the South, the swampy regions near 
the sea, in which white people can not live, and where 
the negroes are not subjected to the stress of industrial 
competition. 
The condition of slavery is one favourable for human 
degeneration. The survival of the docile is its essential 
feature in slavery. There isno premium 
placed on individuality, no advantage in 
intelligence, and a positive disadvantage 
in the impulses of self-direction, A slave can not bea 
man, and the qualities of manhood are checked and de- 
stroyed in slavery. 
In the slums of the cities similar conditions obtain. 
In the life of hopelessness there can be no premium on 
hope. The “artful dodger ” is a typical 
product of the natural selection of the 
slums. To be well born but brought up 
in the slums means to be born to premature death. The 
child of the slums, fitted to his environment, must come 
of the lineage of moral decay. 
In the tropics, conditions favouring human degen- 
eration are constantly present. The intense heat dis- 
courages physical or mental activity, 
while the slight stress of physical sur- 
roundings favours the weak, the vacil- 
lating, the inert. No premium is placed on effort, and 
there is developed a type of man to whom effort is im- 
possible. The conditions of degeneration under the 
tropics closely resemble those seen under ill-advised 
charity. Nature is too kind and too indiscriminating. 
As a result, we have as pauper races the descendants of 
the once civilized and once active Arabs, Egyptians, 
and Saracens. With the decline of effort goes the fail- 
ure of personal will, and the growth of the philosophy 
of fatalism, in which the human will is held to be of no 
Degeneration in 
slavery. 
Degeneration in 
the slums. 
Degeneration in 
the tropics. 
