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EVEN in conversations about simple matters, statements clearly made are often misconceived from impatience of attention. The tendency to conclude quickly from small evidence, which leads most people to judge of strangers on a first meeting, and which causes them to express surprise when to the question—“How do you like so and so," you reply that you have formed no opinion, is often betrayed in their habits as listeners. Continually it turns out that from the beginning of a sentence in course of utterance, they have inferred an entire meaning; and, ignoring the qualifying clauses which follow, quite misapprehend the idea conveyed. This impatience of attention is connected with, and often results from, inability to grasp as a whole the elements of a complex proposition. One who undertakes to explain an involved matter to a person of undisciplined intelligence, finds that though the person has understood each part of the explanation, he has failed to co-ordinate the parts; because the first has dropped out of his mind before the last is reached.

This holds not of listeners only, but of many readers. Either a premature conclusion positively formed from the earlier portions of an exposition, makes further reading seem superfluous; or else the explanations afterwards read do not adequately modify this conclusion which has already obtained possession, and on behalf of which some amour propre is enlisted; or else there is an incapacity for comprehending in their totality the assembled propositions, of which the earlier are made tenable only by combination with the later.

I am led to make these remarks by finding how greatly misunderstood have been some of the doctrines set forth in

this work. Where I had, as I believed, made my meaning clear, and where, on re-reading, the statements still seem to me adequate, I have been supposed to express views quite different from those I intended to express. The issue of this revised edition affords an opportunity for rectifying these misinterpretations, and I gladly take it.

I will begin with one which, partly ascribable to the causes just indicated, is partly ascribable to another cause. It shows in a striking manner, how established modes of conceiving things hinder the formation of alien conceptions: even to the extent of producing an apparent inability to form them.

In Chapter XIV., I have contended that policies, legislative and other, which, while hindering survival of the fittest, further the propagation of the unfit, work grave mischiefs. In the course of the argument I have said :—

"Fostering the good-for-nothing at the expense of the good, is an extreme cruelty. It is a deliberate stirring-up of miseries for future generations. There is no greater curse to posterity than that of bequeathing them an increasing population of imbeciles and idlers and criminals. To aid the bad in multiplying is, in effect, the same as maliciously providing for our descendants a multitude of enemies. It may be doubted whether the maudlin philanthropy which, looking only at direct mitigations, persistently ignores indirect mischiefs, does not inflict a greater total of misery than the extremest selfishness inflicts."

After insisting on the blameworthiness of those who, by thoughtless giving, increase suffering instead of decreasing it, I have guarded myself against misinterpretation by saying:

"Doubtless it is in the order of things that parental affection, the regard of relatives, and the spontaneous generosity of friends and even of strangers, should mitigate the pains which incapacity has to bear, and the penalties which unfit impulses bring round. Doubtless in many cases the reactive influence of this sympathetic care which the better take of the worse, is morally beneficial, and in a degree compensates by good in one direction for evil in another. It may be fully admitted that individual altruism, left to itself, will work advantageously-wherever, at least, it does not go to the extent of helping the unworthy to multiply."

And the reprobation I have expressed is mainly directed against the public agencies which do coercively what should be done voluntarily; as where I have said that

"A mechanically-working State-apparatus, distributing money drawn from grumbling rate-payers, produces little or no moralizing effect on the capables to make up for multiplication of the incapables."

Little did I think that these passages would bring on me condemnation as an enemy to the poor. Yet in four French periodicals, representing divergent schools of French opinion, have I been thus condemned. Here is a passage from the Bulletin du Mouvement Social, 15 Juin, 1879 :-

"Qu'un économiste imbu exclusivement des principes du Darwinisme se mette à raisonner sur la condition des misérables, vous le verrez arriver à un væ miseris aussi barbare que le va victis des anciens. Il vous dira que, dans l'intérêt du progrès de l'espèce, il faut sacrifier sans pitié ceux qui ne sont pas armés dans la lutte pour l'existence. Je le ne leur fais pas dire. Ecoutez Spencer," &c. And here are passages from a review of the Study of Sociology, published in the Revue des deux Mondes, Vol. VI. of 1874, pp. 107-8 :—

"Condamner d'avance la faiblesse et l'infirmité, c'est revenir à la théorie lacédémonienne de l'exposition des enfans. Si l'on était même conséquent, il ne suffirait plus de laisser mourir, il faudrait aller jusqu'à supprimer."

Then representing it as monstrous to "afficher ces conséquences barbares au nom d'une loi biologique," and reproaching me with paying no regard to the social sentiments, to the tenderness for the feeble, and so on, the reviewer winds up by exclaiming :

"Quelle école de philosophie que celle où un Las Cases, un Vincent de Paul, un abbé de l'Épée, un Wilberforce, seraient considérés comme les ennemis de l'espèce humaine!"

M. Paul Janet, a member of the Institute of France, is the writer of these last passages. I have recognized, as who would not, the beneficence of "parental affection" as fostering the feeble; and yet he describes me as practically desiring a return to the Spartan practice of exposing infants! I have said that "the regard of relatives" may rightly "mitigate the pains which incapacity has to bear:" and yet he asserts that I would leave the infirm to die, and, logically, am bound to wish them destroyed! I have admitted that "the spontaneous

generosity of friends and even of strangers" should qualify "the penalties which unfit impulses bring round;" and yet the "conséquences barbares" of my doctrine are represented as being not simply absence of aid to the inferior but active suppression of them! I have said that "individual altruism, left to itself, will work advantageously;" and yet it is alleged that I must consider the distinguished philanthropists he names as enemies of the human race!

That M. Janet's reproaches are unwarranted, and that he has circulated statements of my views widely at variance with the truth, is sufficiently manifest. A thing not so manifest is that he does not see, or will not see, that the general doctrine urged, is urged as being more humane instead of less humane. He is apparently blind to the fact that a kindness which considers only proximate effects may be, and often is, much less in degree than a kindness which takes into account ultimate effects. A sympathy which thinks only of the suffering an operation will give, and exclaims at the cruelty of performing it, is a sympathy inferior to that which, equally affected by the pain inflicted, nevertheless inflicts it, that dying agonies may be escaped and restoration to health and happiness achieved. Anxiety for the welfare of the poor and efforts on their behalf may coexist with profound disapproval of, and strong opposition to, all policies which forcibly burden the worthy that the unworthy may be fostered. If an illustration of their coexistence be asked, I can furnish a conclusive one in the case of a late relative of mine, the Rev. Thos. Spencer, for many years clergyman of a rural parish in Somersetshire. Uncared-for as were his parishioners when he went among them, he established first a Sunday-school, then a village day-school, then a village-library, then land-allotments for labourers, then a clothing club. To his local philanthropic actions were added general ones. He made efforts for churchreform (thus offending his bishop and destroying his chance of preferment); he publicly shared in a movement for extending the suffrage; he took an active part as writer and speaker in the Anti-Corn-Law agitation; he gave countless lectures in furtherance of temperance. When not otherwise occupied he wrote pamphlets (twenty-two in number) all directed in one or other way to improving the condition, bodily and mental, of

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