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American Charities

Creator: Amos G. Warner (author)
Date: 1908
Publisher: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, New York
Source: Straight Ahead Pictures Collection

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A part of the confusion arising from the application of later biological theory came from the inaccurate use of the term "natural selection," as though nature were something apart from man to which he must submit and might not modify. In this sense, natural selection is not only a harsh but expensive way of improving the species. Among men, however, natural selection, in the sense in which that term would be applied to the killing off of young oak trees, is very much modified by two important factors: instinct and reason. The best example of the first is the parental instinct, which causes the parent to stand between the offspring and the remorseless operations of nonsentient nature. Instinctive selection is a step toward something better than natural selection, something more economical of time and energy and life; but it is still a blind and wasteful advance. The excessive development of the sexual instinct, which at one time is necessary to the survival and dominance of the race, may at another become a menace to its welfare. It must then be dominated by reason or by other instincts, or the race will disappear. The instinct of the fighter, once necessary to preserve him in the rude struggles of the time, may at another time leave him a savage in a society which hangs the too combative individual as a murderer. Reason, the second factor in natural selection as applied to human beings, is illustrated when a state enacts laws against murder, or endeavors to establish any other rule of justice than that of the strongest; when it drains a malarial swamp, or provides for sanitary inspection in order to lower the death-rate; whenever, in short, any action is taken for the set purpose of affecting the death-rate, or the birth-rate, or of promoting the public health. Mr. Ritchie has reminded us that if we are to let purely "natural" selection do its perfect work, we must abolish marriage laws and all laws relative to the inheritance of property.

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Rational selection at first, and at its poorest, is only a shade better than instinctive selection. But it is manifest that, at its best and in its possibilities, it is the superior of the other two forms; and those races will eventually survive which practise it most constantly and most wisely. This indicates what is the simple truth, that human "natural selection," could we but understand the latter term in its broadest sense, includes all three, -- nonsentient, instinctive, rational, -- being made up of the total of selective forces operating upon the human species.

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Benevolence has usually operated only on the plane of instinctive selection; but on the whole, even so, it has introduced some improvements into human selection, made that selection less wasteful, and reached results with less expenditure of energy and life. Its services to the species in keeping those who were "fit," from the standpoint of race improvement, from being crushed by temporary and local conditions, overbalance its tendency to keep the essentially "unfit" in existence.

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The most obvious result of charity as a selective force has been to lengthen the lives of the individuals cared for. There are many who believe it to be in and of itself a uniformly desirable result. They hold that no spark of human life can be extinguished without greater indirect loss than the direct gain which comes in freedom from the necessity of supporting the individual. They would care with all tenderness for the most misshapen, physically and morally, until death could no longer be postponed. As the author has stood by the beds of consumptive or syphilitic children, he has wondered if it was a kindness to keep life in the pain-racked body. Cure was out of the question so far as medical science now knows, and one wonders why days of pain should be added to days of pain. The same questions recur as one passes through the incurable wards of an almshouse, especially as one studies the cases of the cancer patients. The answer of religion to such questions is easy, and it seems very sure that without religious incentive we should not have entertained our present views regarding the sanctity of human life.

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But now that the feeling is developed, even science can explain in some sort how it is expedient that it should exist. We cannot extinguish or in any wise connive at the extinction of human life without injury to all the instincts and sensibilities that render it possible for us to live together with our fellows in civilized society. The decline of the death penalty as punishment for the most heinous crimes, the secrecy in which its rare enforcement is now enshrouded, and the substitution of the electric current for the axe and the rope testify to the recognition of this principle. Modern society can afford to incur any expense and trouble to preserve the humane instinct in those who represent its laws. Frequently physicians and matrons and superintendents of institutions become so callous to suffering, and so worn out by overstrain, that they almost connive at the extinction of human life. For instance, in the case of a child suffering from hydrocephalus and beyond hope of cure, only the most constant attention could keep him alive; the matron finally somewhat relaxed her vigilance in seeing that he was properly cared for, and indigestion carried him off. This failure to do all that is possible to combat disease is common in many institutions, usually without any consciousness of a willingness to facilitate death, but none the less with a latent feeling that possibly those that die are happier than those that live.

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