This is but a finite fault, however. The truth is that the scheme of the universe is unalterable, we are but part of the whole and must share in the evolution of the process. An apparent failure is not necessarily a discreditable one. Most lives are failures, if appraised by human estimate. Take for example the life of a young wife who marries a man with disease in his blood. She begins her wedded life with certain commendable ideals. She is young, enthusiastic, ambitious, strong, and she inherently possesses the right to aspire to become an efficient home-maker and a good mother. She gives birth to a child, conceived in love, and during her travail she beseeches her Creator to help her and to help her baby, as all women do at such a time. Her baby is born blind and it is a weak and puny mite. The mother recovers slowly, but she is never the same vigorous and ambitious woman. Later her strength fades away, her enthusiasm falters, the home is blighted and seems a desecrated spot. The baby is a constant worry, it is always sick, it needs expensive care and it exhausts the physical remnant of its mother's health. It finally dies and is laid away, not forgotten, but a sad, sad memory. The ailing and dispirited mother is informed that she must submit to an operation if she desires to regain her health, if not to save her life. She returns from the hospital—not a woman—a blighted thing, an unsexed substitute for what once was a happy, sunny, healthy, innocent girl.
This is not an overdrawn tale,—it is a true story, a common, every-day story. Who was to blame? Why were her prayers not heard? Why, indeed? One might as well ask why seemingly splendid civilizations decayed into forgotten dust, or why empires rotted away. The answer is the same.
History.—From the eugenists' standpoint history is prolific only in negation. A correct interpretation of its pages teaches us that it has not taught the lesson of the "survival of the fittest," but rather the survival of the
strongest. That the strongest is not always the "fittest" needs no commentary. That the fit should survive is the genetic law of nature, and it has been strictly obeyed by biology and humanity when these sciences have adhered to, and have been under the jurisdiction of the natural law.
When religious schisms swayed the world, the stronger party, in material strength or in actual numbers, massacred the weaker, which was frequently the fitter from the standpoint of desirability as progenitors of the race. Thus posterity was deprived of what probably was the representative, potential strength of generations.
At a later date religious schism changed her modus operandi but accomplished the same pernicious purpose, as the following shows:
"Whenever a man or woman was possessed of a gentle nature that fitted him or her to deeds of charity, to meditation, to literature or to art, the social condition of the time was such that they had no refuge elsewhere than in the bosom of the Church. But the Church chose to preach and exact celibacy, and the consequence was that these gentle natures had no continuance, and thus, by a policy, was brutalized the breed of our forefathers."
When religion was not the dominating power, mankind was ruled by militant tyrants. The non-elect were slaves,—uneducated, uncivilized, debased and diseased. The elect were licentious and indolent. Neither class practised any domestic virtues, or respected the institution of motherhood. The process of the selection of the fittest for survival for the purpose of parentage, and for the consummation of the evolutionary gradation, through which the human race is apparently destined to pass, was again in abeyance for a series of generations.
In our own times, the fate of nations and the destiny of their people would seem to depend upon the size of the fighting force and the efficiency of the ships we build; our ability to dicker and barter, to gain a questionable commercial supremacy, and the loquaciousness of our politicians. This, at least, is the criterion upon which the modern statesman estimates the quality of
present-day civilization. He is not apparently interested in the story of the ages. The progress of God's supernal scheme through æons of bigotry and darkness neither suggests nor inspires in him a loftier constructive analysis. He is content to leave the destiny of nations to tons of material, tons of men and tons of talk.