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In all the larger American colleges courses in causes of poverty, charities, and penology are now given either by the professors of the economics department or by a separate staff in a distinct department under the title of sociology; and in a few, other courses of a more constructive character develop still further the economic aspects of altruism. As a recent economist expresses it: --

"The modern theory of economic life fits in not only with the facts of the business world, but with the demands of social reform. The economics of today has finally reached the stage where it seeks to retain the cold passivity of science and yet to reflect the warm glow of human interests and living ideals."

While philanthropy and economics, starting from opposite poles, have been approaching each other and have at last found a common meeting ground, both have at the same time been strongly influenced by the biological sciences. Setting aside the effect of the evolutionary hypothesis upon economic thought, its immediate application to philanthropy raised the question as to whether the ultimate influence of charity in the natural history of mankind was good or evil. (18) Spencer's dictum that the result of shielding people from the consequence of their folly is to fill the world with fools, was indeed no new alarm. Plato, more than two thousand years ago, warned his countrymen of the degradation in store for any nation which perpetuated the unfit by allowing its citizens to breed from enervated stock; and he sketched for them an imaginary republic in which no considerations of inheritance, of family ties, or of pity were permitted to stand in the way of the elimination of the weak and the perfection of the race. (19) But the evolutionists used the new scientific phraseology, declaring that philanthropy and science promoted the survival of the unfit, who reproduced themselves in an enfeebled progeny, and that this interference with the struggle for existence was pernicious. They maintained that civilization itself developed sympathy, which, in turn, devised methods for protecting the weak, and thus the law of progress was reversed. Moreover, it was said that philanthropy not only perpetuated the weak, but in its essence sacrificed the strong to the weak, as shown by the increase of institutions for the insane, the defective, and incapable, and the devotion of humane persons and vast sums of money to their care. (20)

(19) Cummings, Quar. Jour. of Economics, vol. xii., 1898.

(20) Ely, "Evolution of Industrial Society," p. 165.

At this period, from the biological point of view, there were only two ways of improving the human race: the one by selection, the other by heredity. If the selective processes were suspended from philanthropic motives, there was still opportunity to improve the race, independently of selection, by seeing to it that individuals acquired the characteristics that it was desirable for them to transmit. Just when it seemed to be settled that the only way to improve mankind was by training in a carefully adjusted environment, Professor Weismann appeared with his denial that there was any proof of the transmission of acquired characters. He showed that many of the resemblances of children to parents which had been attributed to heredity were merely the result of similar environment, contending that change of environment and special training affected only the individual, whose life-history could not be passed on to the offspring.

This view not only made valueless much that had been written on the bearing of heredity upon social life and environment, but to some it seemed to make the improvement of the race painfully slow, if not almost hopeless, since the only permanent gain must be made through the selective processes. Others, with a better understanding of the full import of the theory in its application to human life, pointed out that whatever environment might not do for the race it was concededly of the highest importance for the individual. Professor Warner, in the first edition of this book, written shortly after Weismann's conclusions had been published, said: --

"It should also be remembered that among the higher animals, and especially among human beings, the individual is more plastic than in the lower orders; his life-history, and especially the history of his very early life, has more influence upon his character. Therefore, while we must give attention to selection, we cannot conclude that certain families are degenerate and essentially unfit to survive until we have given their offspring the very best opportunities for right development. I would say, then, that to assume Weismann to be right -- acquired characteristics to be not transmitted -- is possibly the safest working hypothesis, because, on the one hand, it does not limit our efforts to improve environment, while, on the other hand, it gives us a sharp realization of the importance of selection, a factor which we are otherwise prone to forget or to undervalue. To whatever extent heredity may be ascertained to be a factor in determining character and the consequent career, substantially to that extent the problem of preventing the suffering that comes from destitution is a question of human selection."