Part 21 (2/2)
Perhaps it would not then be i eyes to write a letter, or walking andas he cultivates a nascent inspiration
We ought to tend and nourish the internal child, and _await_ his inative creation coence is not sufficiently mature to create until late; and we should no more force it with a fiction than ould put a false mustache on a child because otherwise he will not have one till he is twenty
THE MORAL QUESTION
When we said, to begin with, that positive science had only given the ”reforiene, as its contribution to society, ere unjust to positive science It has considered not only physical life, but h to think of those studies in bacteriology which refer to the vehicles of infectious nize therefroned to the community of human interests, and this is now affirmed with an emphasis never before displayed Microbes multiply chiefly in damp and dirty places; underfed people are more prone to illness than others, and so are those who are overtired Therefore illness and early death e of the poor who, underfed and overtired, live in damp and dirty places? No It is a question of vehicles Microbes spread in all directions from the sources of infection, by means of dust, insects and all the usual objects of life, in fact by all the means of transport They exist in inconceivable and fabulous numbers; and every sick person is an alle person would suffice to contaminate the whole of Europe
The means of transport allow microbes to cross oceans and continents in every sense We need only observe the transatlantic lines, and those of the railways of the world, in order to realize the lines of communication between the maladies which afflict humanity in all the places of the earth We need only study the industrial changes of matter in order to follow in detail the daily path of the microbes, which put all classes of society into intimate communication The rich lady wears linen on her person which comes fro; she cannot put food into her mouth unless it is offered to her by the poor who have handled it over and over again
The air which is breathed by the rich erround There is no way of escape Statistics prove this: the death rate froh in all countries, ah the poor die in a double proportion to the rich How can we deliver ourselves froe? Only on condition that there be no more sources of infection, that is to say, that there be no longer unhealthful places in the world, and no underfed people constrained to work beyond their strength The only way by which the individual may escape is that by which all hureat principle, which see like a trumpet call: Men, help one another, or you will die
It is a fact that science has inaugurated ”works of sanitation” as its practical contribution to the fight against mortality; towns have been opened out, water has been laid on, houses have been built for the poor, and labor has been protected All the environment tends to ameliorate the ”conditions of life” of the population No works of charity, no expression of love or of pity, has ever been able to do so much Science has shown us that those works which were called ”charitable,” and were looked upon h a restricted and insufficient one, towards the real salvation of the health of huainst death But, in order to reach the goal, such work should be universal, and should constitute a ”reforress,” when there will be no benefactors or benefited, butThis principle: All men are brothers; let theht hand knohat the left hand doeth, will have been translated into practise
In sentimental times, poverty was a stimulus to which the rich man reacted The poor did not really tend to educate the rich s If, in those times, the poor man had said, ”Give me necessities, or thou shalt die,” the richthat the poor hts, as well as the danger of death
To-day science has put things on a different footing It has ”realized” that charity benefits both rich and poor, and has constituted a principle of civilization that which formerly was a ”moral principle” entrusted to sentiiene has penetrated, and has given individual rules of life It is through hygiene that debauchery has become less common, that those epicurean feasts which were celebrated in ancient tiienic meals, the value of which consists in the wise proportion between the needs of the body and the food which is prepared Wine and alcohol are rejected by the rich ood health, and therefore without excess and without poison This is what the ancient luttony and proclai and abstinence to be virtues No one in those tiined that the day would come when millionaires would voluntarily substitute lereat banquets would disappear entirely, leaving only the accounts of them as a ”curiosity” of the past Nay, more: none of these modern ascetics are proud of their virtue, they seeospel precept:
”When ye fast, be not as the hypocrites, of a sad countenancebut anoint thine head, that thou appear not unto men to fast, but unto thy Father which seeth in secret”
If one of the ancient preachers could talk to these ascetics, he would also be much edified by their conversation What has becoht” and ”gaiety” in the tiuerite of Valois? The tales of Boccaccio could not now be discussed in English society, or in any modern aristocratic society even of uerite of Valois Nowadays people are afraid of uttering an incorrect word, even of hinting at thethose parts of their clothing which come in contact with the skin They only talk about elevated things, and only those people who instruct us are looked upon as brilliant conversationalists; those who, in speaking of their travels, tell us about the custo of politics, tell us of the current situation Excessive laughter, jokes, and violent gestures are not per those vivacious and inoffensive gestures which are the natural accompaniment of conversation; the tone of voice is so modulated as to be scarcely audible The ancient preacher would say, ”These people have carried out St Paul's exhortation to an exaggerated degree: 'But fornication and all uncleanness, let it not once be na you, as beco nor jesting which are not convenient'”
And a these evolutions ofitself the guide of fashi+on, has by degrees sie, abolished crinolines, -trained dresses to disappear fro
If aus, he would ask: ”Why are the people doing penance? I see men without any ornaments and with their hair cut short; and wo the street without wigs and without patches on their faces, with their hair simply knotted up; I see countesses dressed in inexpensive costumes, in simple, dark, es are dark, like funeral cars, and the servants wear er enlivens the streets Every one goes about silently and gravely”
Who could ever have persuaded the people of old tiainst excessive vanity, that such a picture as this does not represent a time of penance, but ordinary daily life?
Thesethat they are conde; on the contrary, they look back with horror on the society of the past; they would never go back to those days whenthe of infectious diseases
They have freed thereat her enjoyment of life All the comfort which makes life so delicious to-day would have been an incomprehensible secret to the nobility of past centuries It is the secret of life
Possibly, at one tiht of each other in a sie of the world and all its vanities possessed a secret of life which was full of hitherto unknown delights, and they looked with horror upon the so-called pleasure of their century; while those unconscious ed heads to their feet compressed in narrow boots, called the ways of death ”life and enjoyment”
Positive science hasdirectly into the sphere of y the social problems of immorality and crime have been opened up, and external facts have been studied; and criy has revealed the ”inferior types” who by hereditary taint are those who have a predisposition to all the s Morel's theories concerning degeneration and the resulting theories of Loht into this chaos, wherein opinion as to hueneration” are chiefly rooted in the nervous system, and all the abnormal personalities produced thereby ”deviate” froence and different , illusions, anomalies of the will such as impulses, irresolutions, and crazes, the deficient ence builds up systematic delusions, which are interpreted as philosophical principles, place these persons in a category apart as extra-social beings
The general nervous weakness and the wandering intelligence which preclude an interest in work make of these persons individuals incapable of production, who therefore try to live upon the productions of others This fundamental fact, which tends to unite a dislike of productive labor with impulses towards rapine, causes the causes which prepare the external means for crime These men are ”bad” But if we observe more closely we see that it is not wickedness hich we have to deal but morbid conditions and social errors If such be the case, these bad men, who from no fault of their oere born in these unhappy conditions, and who are driven to perdition by society, are really ”victiated, reveals this fact They are hunted and neglected fro to mental deficiency, volitive disorders, to the anomaly of the affections and also to lack of physical attraction, they pass from maternal persecution to that of the school, and finally to that of society, bringing on themselves every kind of punishment
The first picture which Morel drew of these ”dead ones of the race”
was an i a synthesis which, if not very exact, yet sums up the phenoeneration acts upon a man, he may have defective children, whose deficiency increases in the two or three following generations, until it is extinguished in the final sterility of exceedingly debased individuals According to Morel, madmen, criminals, epileptics and idiots form the sad series in this extinction ofdescendants, does not really die, but is renewed in theenerate who dies, for his kind is ”extinguished,” the few ony”
This ”dying species,” which lives a its weakness, its delusions, its convulsions, irritability and egois, lunatic asylu picture, and what a warning to man! One ”fault” may be a mortal one to hienerations, and leads to eternal perdition
How terrible it is to think of punish on the innocent head of a child! and how evident it is that our present life is not everything, but that it has a continuation, e shall reap the true rewards or the true punishreat extent in our own hands Shall we have a beautiful, healthy, prolific son, or a defor and understanding us? The hygiene of generation is the iene If the salvation of the individual life can only be obtained by caring for the hygienic life of the whole of hu the laws of health and the laws of life that the salvation of the species can be obtained
Alcoholism, all poisons, overwork, constitutional maladies, dissipation of nervous force, vice, and idleness, are all _causes_ of degeneration It was science which went on preaching these things for the salvation ofvirtue But above all, it inculcated the great principle of ”pardon,” which hitherto had been one of the o, no one, however pitiful and generous, could have looked upon the delinquent with the same justice and pity as science has done It has pointed out that we are _all_ responsible for this victim of social causes, that we must all accuse ourselves of the sins committed by the inferior individual, and exert ourselves for his regeneration by all the means in our power It was only the saints who had an intuition of this truth, when they offered their merits for all men in common and accepted responsibility for the offenses of all