and increased liability to disease, with a nervous system which has not attained normal power of functioning, go corresponding defects of mental and moral life.

Millions of them

What is the fate of these defective persons? perish in infancy or at the first stress of life. The tendency of the unfit is toward extinction. Some crowd inferior places, do menial and unpleasant work at low wages, as the price of existence. Others are parasitic and are supported by their families or at public expense. The employer of labor rejects many as unemployable. The teachers in public schools find them slow, stupid, feeble-minded in all degrees. The legislator confronts them with poor laws and with criminal statutes or prisons.

But this same social evolution has produced sympathy or altruism. The origin of a disposition to care for the weak is ancient and deep as parenthood. In human life its beginning was in the maternal instinct, without which the race would perish in the helplessness of infancy. The struggle for self-preservation is modified by race feelings. In all nations these race-preserving sympathies have found expression, at first in the clan or tribe, later in the state, finally in a philanthropy which overleaps the narrow limits of caste and sect, and regards man as man. These sympathies have created institutions, customs of mercy, having for their purpose the general welfare, the correction of evil, the relief of misery, the good of the degraded, the progress of mankind.

5. The Spiritual Environment. To prevent misunderstanding we must distinctly bear in mind that the external world of nature and material human works is not the entire environment of each man, nor the most important part of it. The ideas, beliefs, hopes, and fears which rule the psychical life are in the air, and all about us. Beliefs are as real as habitat and climate, food and housing. There will be few paupers, beggars, and criminals in proportion as the beliefs of the people are favorable to social morality. Thomas Chalmers proudly used the poor Scotch peasants as illustrations of the triumph of self-control among humble

people who had pure ideals, thrift, and independence of spirit. The standard of life is a social psychical fact. It works by suggestion, imitation, fashion, and custom.

How far these influences of culture affect the race physically, and thus form the material conditions of higher psychical activities, will depend on the truth or error of the doctrine of the heritability of acquired characteristics. But that they affect

all members of society directly there can be no question, and there is no controversy. The psychical tradition, in books, pictures, laws, customs, institutions, is handed down as really as physical traits are transmitted by generation; and this spiritual tradition acts educationally on communities most powerfully, constantly, and with increasing momentum. It may be a metaphor to speak of a "spiritual inheritance," but the phrase tells a vital truth. There are two directions given by this spiritual tradition, one toward progress, and the other toward debasement and ruin, "the environment of neglect."

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6. Selection. Our study of biological laws is not complete without indicating the significance of selection in relation to our subject. In the lower and earlier stages of the struggle for life, the process of selection is purely natural, without plan or design on the part of the participants. Without entering upon a full description of this age-long process we may sum it up in the sentence: At awful cost of suffering and life, there has been a gradual elimination of the races not suited to life on this planet, a gradual introduction of higher and nobler forms of life, and an approximate adaptation of inferior forms to lowlier tasks.

But while this same process is carried forward in human society, an element of prevision and provision mingles with the struggle. Before the advent of man there was an animal instinct, shared now by human beings, to choose the best mates and reject the imperfect. This race-preserving and race-improving sexual selection has played a large part in the history of our species. The individuals which have not this instinct tend to perish with

out offspring, and leave those better endowed to continue the species. But all this is at terrible cost, with many blunders.

The highest stage of selection is rational and purposeful. Men select the finest stallions and mares, the best specimens of bulls for breeding, the most perfect wheat grains for seed in fields devoted to grain. More slowly and hesitatingly they have begun to apply the same principle to marriage and the propagation of the human species. Plato gave the hint ages ago in a utopian and immoral scheme; but ignorance and appetite, prejudice and superstition, have been obstacles in the way of working out and applying his idea in a form acceptable to Christian morality.

Purposeful selection, however, is not always made in view of social advantage. A man may prefer a rich and neurotic wife to a poorer woman who is strong and capable. Among ignorant and animal-like human beings marriage is chiefly a matter of proximity and the accident of contact; and with the very lowest classes sexual union is blind and heedless of results.

In connection with the subject of selection must be considered the effects of methods of relief and correction. Indiscriminate charity encourages the practices of begging. Outdoor relief in support of degraded families, without returns in work, tends to increase the number of those who would perish if left to their own resources. Many examples could easily be given in all communities of debased stocks breeding and continuing to live at the expense of public and private charity.

It is claimed by friends of deaf mutes that the modern method of educating persons of this class in separate institutions tends to create a stock of families in whom the defect is hereditary and accompanied with other grave deformities.

It is true that in some institutions, as crowded infant asylums, charity has found a way of effectually exterminating imperfect and illegitimate children. Hospitals founded with pious intent, but managed by the incompetent, become plague-smitten, and increase mortality. But such results are not sought, the sincere purpose of philanthropy being to prolong the individual life.

These illustrations do not prove that charity is necessarily cruel, but that in effect it may be, and that it is under obligation not to promote a selection of the unfit if it is possible to avoid it. Hereafter we shall point out methods by which the sufferer may be mercifully cared for without being permitted to injure the quality of the race. It is enough at this point to show with emphasis how charity may be an accomplice of vice, ignorance, and brutality.\

CHAPTER III.

EXPLANATION OF DEPENDENCY BY NATURE AND SITUATION.

At this point we pass from consideration of general laws of causation, biological and historical, to a direct study of individuals. The primary data are furnished by observation of individual cases. All further steps depend on the insight and accuracy of the first impressions. Tables of statistics have no higher value than the original entries out of which they are composed; and the original entries are the particular judgments of individuals who are in contact with the dependent persons.

1. The Problem. Our problem is to account for dependence on the community. While most dependents are weak and inferior in body and mind, they are by no means all degenerate or abnormal. Our problem is far wider than a study of defect. Multitudes of people become dependent, at least temporarily, by fire, flood, or epidemics. Old people and little children may require support, although they are entirely normal. The explanation, therefore, must proceed from the study of the nature of the individual outward to his situation, and still farther, to his heredity and culture, and to the general social conditions which · have affected all these factors. The intelligent worker is very likely to carry on his study in this order, from the particular case to the wide sweep of law.

If independent observers, in various cities and states, reach approximately the same judgment as to the value of causes, this correspondence commands a high degree of confidence.

2. Value of Statistics. — The tabulation of a multitude of separate cases actually adds to the kind of knowledge derived from local and isolated observations. By reaching an average