234 DAEWmiSM AND HUMAN LIFE 



prejudice against the marriage of undesirables, 

 fuller recognition of woman's rights, both as to 

 mating and maternity. For another step we shall 

 soon be ready — a form of rational social selection 

 — the institution of a sort of marriage test and some 

 attempt to prevent the multiplication of those who, 

 by their own inefficiency, have fallen back on the 

 community for support. 



Social sentiment will not permit social surgery, 

 which is probably just as well ; but we cannot be 

 proud of our tender-heartedness when we reflect 

 on what we do permit in fiie way of slow murder 

 in the present and in the way of keeping up misery 

 for the future. 



In this connection Mr. Whetham writes : 

 " When we have built and endowed schools and 

 hospitals, pulled down insanitary dwellings and 

 thrown open green spaces, brought in fresh water 

 and uncontaminated milk, vaccinated babies and 

 destroyed tuberculous cows, when we have estab- 

 lished a cult of fresh air, a whole science of nature- 

 study, and the paraphemaha of the simple life — 

 we are brought up sharp against a stone wall. We 

 are informed that our unemployed are chiefly 

 unemployable, that the provision of more lunatic 

 asylums is of greater urgency than the provision 

 of increased school accommodation, that a whole 

 class of feeble-minded individuals has grown up 

 and is totally unprovided for, that ability is more 

 difficult to fiind and mediocrity shows no tendency 

 to rise, that general physical deterioration may 

 be knocking at our doors — in short, in spite of all 

 our efiorts, matters are conceivably worse than 

 when we started, and an uncomfortable feeling 

 comes that " in spite of " might possibly be more 



