sano.

The triumphs of the medical art in this matter are not of general advantage, but a general evil. Darwin has no doubt, that the level of health in contemporary society has become lowered to an alarming extent, and that medical art, by sustaining the weaker organisms, only increases the evil for future generations. It is necessary, he tells us, to lessen the number of the weak in conflict with the strong in the struggle for existence.

The following are the means by which Darwin proposes that legislation shall attain this end. The legal obstacles to marriage, which now exist, shall remain in force. In addition, the law shall, in the first place, recognise the appearance in one of the parties of certain diseases as cause for obligatory divorce. What are these diseases? Darwin gives a long list of ailments transmitted by heredity; we find there diseases of the lungs, of the stomach, of the liver, gout, scrofula, rheumatism, and others; so that every married person who does not enjoy herculean health must tremble daily for the security of the marriage contract, with all the more reason because its dissolution would accord with the interests of the State, or, we should rather say, with the interests of mankind. That Darwin had in view the institution of an inquisitorial process, we must assume, because, in the second place, he proposes to establish a general system of medical inspection to search for the diseases mentioned above, on the model of the German system of testing the fitness of recruits. Darwin proposes to establish the following rule. No one may contract marriage without producing evidence that he has never suffered from

insanity. But that is not enough. He must produce an untainted pedigree-that is, he must prove that his parents, and even his most distant relations in ascendant and collateral lines, have never suffered from such complaints. All this is necessary, that. among the mass the capacity for happiness may be augmented by the extermination of disease-the chief obstacle to happiness.

Is it possible to establish such restrictions? asks Darwin, and answers, Of course, Restrictions of a similar nature already exist in the marriage laws of many countries. As evidence of this, he adduces three pages of examples of the different restrictive laws, mostly from barbarous countries, citing indiscriminately the regulations of Prussia, Siam, China, and Madagascar, even of the Ostiaks and Tunguses. If we may judge by appearance, he is pleased by every restriction of marriage, and every facility for divorce. He ends his dissertation without considering the simple question, What end will be served by legal restrictions on marriage, when it will be impossible to prevent natural unions with the same effect in the birth of children? It may be, indeed, this question has occurred to the author; if so, he has found a reply, which he gives, in the example of Japan, where prostitution is not only tolerated, but even protected by the State, as a means of preventing an undue increase of population.

It is

Thus reasons the herald of Darwinism. plain that to him the fundamental law of life is the preservation of the strong and the extirpation of the weak. And apparently he would establish this principle as a law of civil society. It is a strange

specimen of the infatuation of a scholar with a principle discovered by himself. The legislator of a future society is to accept such ideas as these, and to acknowledge in life and progress no other motives than the interests of physiology-of moral factors he will not even dream. To him all organisms, weak and strong, are numbers, abstract quantities, for the purpose of mathematical calculation. He will not ask himself the question, Will the strong be stronger for having destroyed the weak? He knows not the truth that all strength grows in action, experience, and practice; that the strong will have no occasion to prove and develop their strength when there shall be no weak who require assistance and protection; and that the weakest, trained in favourable conditions, may become strong, and be capable of transmitting their strength to future generations. And lastly, will the victors in the struggle of nature be capable of ministering to the perfection of the race, if their strength be sustained by a mechanical process at the expense of the weak?

THE SPIRITUAL LIFE

I

How precious are the old institutions, the old traditions, the old customs! The people guards them as the ark of the covenant of its forefathers. But how often has history shown that popular governments do not value but regard them as an old garment of which they must be rid. Rulers condemn them without mercy, or re-cast them in new forms, and expect a new spirit to animate them at once. Their expectations are seldom fulfilled. The old institutions are precious and indispensable because they have had their origin not in invention but in the life of the past; they are consecrated in the minds of the people by that high authority which history alone can give. This authority cannot be replaced, for its roots rest in that unconscious part of our being where the moral principles are firmly set. It is vain to suppose that the sanction of history can be replaced in the minds of the people by the spirit of an institution newly founded. Few individuals acquire sentiments of reverence through reason, or find in reason the source of inspiration and faith. Such sentiments remain inaccessible to the mass; if we wish to inspire them from without we fail, and awaken false and fantastic ideas: The masses assimilate ideas only through direct senti

ment, which is educated and strengthened by history, and transmitted from father to son, from generation to generation. These traditions may be destroyed: to revive them is impossible.

Often in the depths of the old institutions there is embodied some profoundly, true idea which springs directly from the spirit of the people. Although such inspiring idea is sometimes hard to recognise through the multitude of forms, excrescences, and veils which have lost to-day their primitive significance, yet the masses apprehend it by instinct, and firmly cling to their institution by its associated forms. They cherish their institution with its excrescences, sometimes ugly and often objectless, because their instinct is to guard the hidden germs of truth against shallow attack. These germs are all the more precious because they symbolise the immemorial needs of the soul, protecting the truth hidden in their depths. What if the forms that invest the institutions of the people are rude, the product of rude customs, of a rude temper, these are phenomena temporary and accidental. When manners and customs are softened, the forms themselves also are ennobled and inspired. Purify the mind, elevate the spirit, enlighten the ideas of the people, and the rude forms disappear, making way for others more perfect, until all are simple and pure.

This the reformers of the people ignore when they rave over the rudeness of form, and the abuses of the ancient institutions. Engaged with ceremonies and forms alone, they neglect the spirit of the institution, which they would destroy altogether, seeing there nothing but rudeness and ceremonial superstition. They