Nor could we check our sympathy, if so urged by hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature. The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy, which was originally acquired as part of the social instincts, but subsequently rendered, in the manner previously indicated, more tender and more widely diffused. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man.
Thus the weak members of civilised societies propagate their kind. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. We civilised men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick we institute poor-laws and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. “With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health.
0 kommentar(er)
