Darwinism and Race Progress

of improved external conditions, and notably of the sanitary advances which result from the e

of mortality after middle age. These sickly ones leave children behind, who, as a matter of course, transmit their constitution to the race. In our study of disease we included intemperance, for in cases where there is a distinct liability to give way to drunken habits, and apart from those cases where it is merely a habit acquired in bad com

ten an Acqu

r for evil, and later on he is still susceptible to many evil temptations which may in his case be exceedingly strong. We are therefore all of us a compound of our innate inborn qualities, and those that have been stamped, as it were, upon us by contact with the external world; and we have no right to judge in an off-hand manner of the innate qualities of a criminal without a very extensive knowledge of his upbringing, and of the temptations and influences which have surrounded him. Theft by a person in

nate C

eget children, and the suffering they inflict and have to endure is continued from parent to offspring. In every locality these inveterate criminals are well-known to the administrators of justice. Time after time they come up for punishment, and w

ukes

he history of crime can be traced so far as it can be in the case of the Jukes, and the reason is that most families disperse by intermarriage, and the taint becomes diluted and no longer stands out in prominence. The distinguished French novelist, Emile Zola, who, in a series of novels, traces out the history of a criminal family, falls into the error of supposi

s not stamp out C

e same reason individuals with this innate tendency will be all the more increased, and that the further intermarriage of these individuals with others having similar taints of character, may at any time tend to again reproduce the inveterate criminal in perpetual recurrence. We may dilute ink with

f moral backbone, of which they were a probable example. We have not to go far to find in our everyday experience of life that out of a family whose members are most of them docile, yielding to discipline, and capable of affection and self-sacrifice, one or two, perhaps, seem by nature to be wanting in these qualities. Such sporadic cases are only to be explained on the ground that imperfections in their ancest

riminal an Ultimate

e of society which is shown by history to be the greatest preventive of crime as now understood. Like persons affected with scarlet fever or other infectious maladies, the propagandist criminal should be confined in his proper hospital-a prison-and if incurable should be detained until his death. Like phthisis or other hereditary dis

class together with the incapables and deserving poor. This is, indeed, a most unfortunate state of things, for we are bound to draw a strong line of demarcation between those, on the one hand, who are in want through acquired habits of idleness, those who are innately incapable, and

te Use of the

f mind, and perhaps also to an incomplete acquaintance with Scriptural teaching. The "poor" of Bible language means obviously the deserving and unfortunate, probably the incapable, but certainly not the habitually idle and vicious. We a

the Incapables, and the V

, who, having their limbs strong enough to labour, may be daily kept in continual labour whereby everyone of them may get their living with their own hands." If, however, we look a little closer into the matter we shall be able to recognise at least three quite distinct classes of persons grouped

en invested in a society administered by dishonest men; we find widows and orphans of men who have died from accident or disease while in the course of regular and honourable employment. With these will be mixed the class we have especially to study-the incapables; a poor type, with physical and mental defects, such as insanity, epilepsy, and idiocy, and with these many vagrants must be included. Where laws or regulation

l soldiers) had been killed in active service, was left without relatives. She supported herself and lived soberly until old age, when feebleness and commencing gangrene of the foot compelled her to seek the poorhouse, where she died alone and unvisited by

of view and of approach. The physician, accustomed as he is to study his cases, each with their peculiar symptoms, and each with their appropriate methods of treatment, would,

Regulations

ill not work although capable of it, we have to remember that the comm

independent labourer," remarked a witness in the Poor-law Commissioners' Report of 1834. It cannot be denied, therefore, that there is a certain want of independence (especially perhaps in rural districts) engendered by methods of relief administered in past times. As a result of this, those without physical and mental disqualification for work fall back on the Poo

eserving poor, that organised charity came into existence, but it

us are Subjects fo

is system should continue. And that it should do so is inadvisable, both in the int

mselves, not only would increased funds be at the disposal of the deserving poor, but the moral atmosphere of the poorhouse and relieving office would be altogether purged by the exclusion of the sturdy beggars, of those who are able-bodied, but idle and vicious, who should be placed apart and treated under separate regulations. They are subjects for the police and for the criminal law; as outcasts from humanity, we may en

and as there are limits to everyone's resources, when we give anything, even a penny to a passing beggar, we are giving some of this power, we are taking upon ourselves the responsibility

here can be no doubt that the lawgivers responsible for the present condition of public charity, and private individuals who assist cases whose

r in ve

on one side, in a class by himself-a criminal class-we

ortly, there is too little selective influence in a civilised state. Some of our old aristocratic families were headed no doubt by men of great capacity at their commencement, but it was the organisation of Romish civilisation that gave them the conquest over their worse organised fellow-kinsmen settled in England. Blood for blood, innate quality for innate quality, there was little to choose between them, yet circumstances made one the villein and the other the lord. Selective influences that might have operated in a savage community have been kept in abeyance to a great measure by inherited property and class distinction; and though, fortunately, good men are continually rising

ded Attitu

victims to want. Any note of condescension in our attitude towards this class is an impertinence of the grossest nature, and it is our duty, if we help at all, to do so as one brother to another, simply and naturally. The re

e numberless stories, many of them undoubtedly true, of the large sums yearly made by well got-up begging swindlers, show how little our emotions are guided by our reasoning faculties. We are too prone to give when our feelings get a shock, and we are too often incapable of acting in anticipation

ncapa

weather, leaving the towns for the country in spring, and returning to them in autumn. They sleep in barns, under ricks or hedges, and live on what they can find or beg or steal. They marry and have children, who are often a source of profit from the increased charity they bring. Give them a spade to dig, a hammer with which to break stones, or a garden to weed, and they tire of the constantly repeated action, be it ever so simple; complex manipulations, or tasks requiring forethought or attention, are for them quite out of the question. They will keep rooks out of the fi

tely Required for

lived in the Sussex Downs or the Yorkshire Wolds, and shot buzzards with flint-tipped arrows, felt a superiority amidst his surroundings, and we have every reason to believe he was as proud a man as any one of us. But the poor tramp, an outcast and a dependent, lives a life worse than that of the shepherd-do

pables, any proposal to segregate these would in the meanwhile probably be unfavourably received. In the case of the unhealthy we may hope by force of public opinion soon to prevent such marriages as are to-day of too common an occurrence, but in the case of the criminals and incapables the case is different. They are not to be touched by a sense of public duty, for they only obey the preponderating influences of the moment. Their lives will have to be ordered for them, and the responsibility of act

reated like Chroni

the living than they are at present, and the poorhouse might come to be regarded as a hospital and shelter for the unfortunate, rather than as a refuge for drunkenn

TNO

rime in England," vo

essalonia

istle to Ti