SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST.

Ohinemuri Gazette, Volume I, Issue 26, 11 June 1892, Page 2

SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST.

The current meeting of the British Association has been accused of being particularly doll. The 1 impeachment is most false. It is seldom that so many of the papers converge as they do this year to so interesting a conclusion. That conclusion is simply this, that we are all going with remarkable rapidity to- the dogs. That, of course, is not how the grave and reverend seignors of science put the matter, but is what their arguments come to. The, disquieting diagnosis at which the scientific doctors arrive will hardly surprise such careful stndents of sociology were not enslaved by the idols of the market-place. That " civilisation " on which we pride ourselves —what bottom has it ? Is it anything but a gigantic conspiracy for checking the, survival of the fittest,? The conspirators bear honoured names, all of them; but then, what evil has ever been done in the world except in the name of good ? . The conspirators are medical science, philanthropy, and commercial progress. The case against the first-named offender was briefly but cogently stated by Dr Fothergill himself. "In the Middle Ages," he said, "the weakly retired to the cloister and the convent, while the race was reproduced by the strong. Now the offspring of the weakly could be reared by costly prepared foods. The children of to-day were the products of the weakly as well as of the strong." That is the case in a nutshell. The unfittest no longer die out; the doctors insist on their surviving. And in so doing they have the philandthropists on their side. Sterner ages used ,to hang their criminals, just as they " exposed their invalids." To-day we nurse onr invalids and pet our criminals—ror, what is worse, manufacture them. Once upon a time Jthe hungry starved; but *now we take care that they shall, at. any rate, have enough to eat to breed others like them. And not only are we too "humanitarian" to- expose. our. scum, we decline even to exterminate their vermin. The London .parks are.giyeu over, some one complains, to " persons palpably filthy and" verminous." Bat what, asks Mr. Plunket, can Ido ? What indeed! — when no sooner do the philanthropists hear of it than they rush upon the scene with coffee-stalls and shelters, and insist upon adding free meals to the free quarters provided for the unfittest. And theu on the top of all this- comes our "commercial prosperity/ What this means, broadly, to the community at large is simply the growth of big towns —the substitution, that is to say, in the case of an ever increasing proportion of our people, of unhealthy for healthy conditions of life. Here, then,, is . what science and philanthropy and commerce, between them are doing for us. They, are bringing, indeed, more Englishmen every day into the world, and making each one perhaps live a little longer. But at the same time they are taking every precaution that each man's child shall be a good deal weaker than himself. Is it not about time that this kind of " progress" be stopped and the cnrse of civilisation checked ?. <