become perpetual is due in part to the charity that, in aiding the poor, helps pauperism to mate with pauperism. It is the duty of true charity to remove the causes of weakness and suf

Degeneration through charity.

fering. It is equally her duty to see that weakness and suffering are not needlessly perpetuated. Startling results may follow from the selective breeding and preservation of paupers. In the valley of Aosta in northern Italy, and in other Alpine regions, is found the form of idiocy known as cretinism. What is the primitive cause of the cretin, and what is the causal connection of cretinism with goitre, a disease of the thyroid glands which always accompanies it, I do not know.

The cretins of
Aosta.

It suffices for our purpose to notice that the severe military selection which ruled in Switzerland, Savoy, and Lombardy for many generations took the strongest. and healthiest peasants to the wars, and left the idiot and goitrous to carry on the affairs of life at home. To bear a goitre was to exempt from military services. Thus in some regions the disease has been a local badge of honour. It is said that when iodine lozenges were given to the children of Savoy in the hope of preventing the enlargement and degeneration of the thyroid gland, mothers would take this remedy away from the boys, preferring the goitre to military service.

In the city of Aosta the goitrous cretin has been for centuries an object of charity. The idiot has received generous support, while the poor farmer or labourer with brains and no goitre has had the severest of struggles. In the competition of life a premium has thus been placed on imbecility and disease. The cretin has mated with the cretin, the goitre with the goitre, and charity and religion have presided over the union. The result is that idiocy is multiplied and intensified. The cretin

of Aosta has been developed as a new species of man. In fair weather the roads about the city are lined with these awful paupers-human beings with less intelligence than the goose, with less decency than the pig.

The asylum for cretins in Aosta is a veritable chamber of horrors. The sharp words of Whymper are fully jus, tified:

"A large proportion of the cretins who will be born in the next generation will undoubtedly be offsprings of

cretin parents. It is strange that self-interest does not lead the natives of Aosta to place their cretins under such restrictions as would prevent their illicit intercourse; and it is still more surprising to find the Catholic Church actually legalizing their marriage. There is

something horribly grotesque in the idea of solemnizing the union of a brace of idiots, and, since it is well known that the disease is hereditary and develops in successive generations, the fact that such marriages are sanctioned

is scandalous and infamous." (Whymper; Scrambles among the Alps.)

True charity would give these creatures not less helpful care, but a care which would guarantee that each individual cretin should be the last of his generation.

Degeneration in

isolation.

In isolation as under charity, weakness may mate with weakness and perpetuate degeneration. The classical studies of Dr. Dugdale into the natural history of the group of degenerates called "the Jukes" shows that the conditions of the slums may be transferred to the forests. Outside of the swift current of life in a sheltered nook of the mountains this family The Jukes. of cutthroats and prostitutes found a place for development. The crush of a great city is in some degree an instrument of purification. It brings evil and weakness into close competition with wisdom and strength, and the former come to speedy destruction. The evils of the city rise from corrosion rather than from competition. There is nothing in the pure air of the mountains that will purify the lineage of thieves and paupers. Doubtless the fact of isolation and freedom from stress of competition has been a factor in the preservation of the decaying Jukes, and the same conditions bring about the results in the declining classes driven from the plains to the mountains in other parts of the world. The Great Smoky Mountains are not responsible for the poor whites of The poor whites. the highlands of North Carolina. These people belong to the lineage of England's pauperism transported first to her colonies, afterward driven from the plains to the mountains because of their inability to keep slaves, and since preserved there by their isolation from new currents of life. In like manner, the lowest type of negroes is preserved in the isolation of

the black belt of the South, the swampy regions near the sea, in which white people can not live, and where the negroes are not subjected to the stress of industrial competition.

Degeneration in slavery.

The condition of slavery is one favourable for human degeneration. The survival of the docile is its essential feature in slavery. There is no premium placed on individuality, no advantage in intelligence, and a positive disadvantage in the impulses of self-direction. A slave can not be a man, and the qualities of manhood are checked and destroyed in slavery.

Degeneration in the slums.

In the slums of the cities similar conditions obtain. In the life of hopelessness there can be no premium on hope. The "artful dodger" is a typical product of the natural selection of the slums. To be well born but brought up in the slums means to be born to premature death. The child of the slums, fitted to his environment, must come of the lineage of moral decay.

Degeneration in the tropics.

In the tropics, conditions favouring human degeneration are constantly present. The intense heat discourages physical or mental activity, while the slight stress of physical surroundings favours the weak, the vacillating, the inert. No premium is placed on effort, and there is developed a type of man to whom effort is impossible. The conditions of degeneration under the tropics closely resemble those seen under ill-advised charity. Nature is too kind and too indiscriminating. As a result, we have as pauper races the descendants of the once civilized and once active Arabs, Egyptians, and Saracens. With the decline of effort goes the failure of personal will, and the growth of the philosophy of fatalism, in which the human will is held to be of no