330 JOURNAL OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 
purposes of illustration, assume it to be a current doctrine; and 
what I wish to point out is, that it is one of those doctrines which 
are likely to have an important bearing on human life, and, 
unless moderated in its practical application to our fellow- 
creatures, may exercise a detrimental influence on the more pure 
and refined and tender qualities of social life. Once lay down 
a belief that you have discovered a universal law of Nature, and 
with it the maxim that human feeling and conduct should be 
harmonious in their flow with the laws of Nature, and it is not 
difficult to see how it may come to pass that men, holding it to be 
a law of Nature, that in the struggle for existence the weakest 
must go to the wall and clear the way for the Fittest to Survive, 
should unconsciously and gradually withhold the help they have 
been wont to render to the feeble, the diseased, and the deformed 
which has tended to preserve them in life, when left to themselves 
they would have died, and so render it possible at least for them to 
have a part in forming a posterity. Mr. Herbert Spencer, in his 
work entitled The Study of Sociology, says, in reference to his own 
remarks on the elimination of the feeble elements in society, " I 
am aware that this reasoning may be met by the criticism that, 
carried out rigorously, it would negative social ameliorations in 
general;" and he further adds, "How far the mentally- superior 
may, with a balance of benefit to society, shield the mentally- 
inferior from the evil results of their inferiority is a question too 
involved to be here discussed at length. ... It may be fully 
admitted that individual altruism left to itself will work ad- 
vantageously, wherever at least it does not go to the extent of 
helping the unworthy to multiply. But an unquestionable injury 
is done by agencies which undertake in a wholesale way to foster 
good-for-nothings, putting a stop to that natural process of elimi- 
nation by which society continually purifies itself." (pp. 344-6.) 
It is clear that Mr. Spencer distinctly recognises here how 
likely the Scientific Spirit is to affect the habitual mental attitude 
of the strong towards the weak, and to modify the social arrange- 
ments which are the expression of that attitude. The just dis- 
couragement, by raising barriers to marriage, which wise men give 
to the perpetuation of mental and physical inferiority, is only one 
form of the logical outcome of the scientific position. For this 
we may be thankful ; but in so far as the Scientific Spirit gains 
mastery over men to that extent will it, unless counteracted by 
