I will allow him to understand the mad-man, for the madman is an exception

Thus when Dr. Saleeby says that a young man about to be marriedshould be obliged to produce his health-book as he does his bank-bookthe expression is neat: but it does not convey the real respects in whichthe two things agree, and in which they differ.

To begin with, of coursethere is a great deal too much of the bank-book for the sanity of our com-monwealth; and it is highly probable that the health-book, as conductedin modern conditions, would rapidly become as timid, as snobbish, andas sterile as the mside of marriage has become In the moral atmo-sphere of modernity the poor and the honest would probably get asmuch the worst of it if we fought with health-books as they do when w'efight with bank-books. But that is a more general matter; the real point isin the difference between the two. The difference is in this vital fact thata monied man generally thinks about money whereas a healthy mardoes not think about health. If the strong young man cannot produce hiscalth-book, it is for the perfectly simple reason that he has not got one.He can mention some extraordinary malady he has: but every man ofhonour is expected to do that now whatever may be the decision thatfollows on the knowledge.Health is simply Nature, and no naturalist ought to have the im-pudence to understand it. Health, one may say, is God; and no agnostichas any right to claim His acquaintance. For God must mean, among other things that mystical and multitudinous balance of all things by whichthey are at least able to stand up straight and endure; and any scientistwho pretends to have exhausted this subject of ultimate sanity, I will callthe lowest of religious fanatics. I will allow him to understand the mad-man, for the madman is an exception. But if he says he understands thesane man, then he savs he has the secret of the Creator. For wheneveryou and I feel fully sane, w'e are quite incapable of naming the elementsthat make up that mysterious simplicity. We can no more analyse suchpeace in the soul than we can conceive in our heads the whole cnormousand dizzy equilibrium by which, out of suns roaring like infernos andheavens toppling like precipices, He has hanged the world uponnothingWe conclude, therefore, that unless Eugenic activity be restricted tomonstrous things like mania, there is no constituted or constitutable authority that can really over-rule men in a matter in which they arelargely on a level. In the matter of fundamental human rights, nothingcan be above Man, except God. An institution claimingGod might have such authority but this is the last claim the Eugenistsare likely to make One caste or one profession seeking to rule men insuch matters is like a man s right eye claiming to rule him, or his left leto run away with him. It is madness. We now pass on to consider whether there is really anything in the way of Eugenics to be done, with suchcheerfulnessas we may poafter discovering that there is nobody todo it

Dr. Saleeby did me the honour of referring to me in onethis subject, and said that even I cannot produce any but a feeble-minded child from a fecble-minded ancestry. To which I reply, first ofall, that he cannot produce a fecblc-mindcd child. The whole point of ourcontention is that this phrase conveys nothing fixed and outside opinion.There is such a thing as mania, which has alwavs been segregated; thereis such a thing as idiotcy, which has always been segregated; but feeblemindedness is a new phrase under which you might segregate any'bodIt is essential that this fundamental fallacy in the use of statistics shobe got somehow into the modern mind. Such people must be made to seethe point, which is surely plain chough, that it is useless to have exactfigures if they are exact figures about an inexact phrase. If I say, Thereare five fools in Acton, it is surely quite clear that, though no mathem-atician can make five the same as four or six, that will not stop you oranyone else from finding a few more fools in Acton. Now weak-minded-ness, like folly is a term divided from madness in this vital man-her-that in one sense it applies to all men, in another to most men, inanother to verv manv men, and so on. It is as if Dr Saleeby were to savVanity, I find, is undoubtedly hereditary. Here is Mrs Jones, who wasvery sensitive about her sonnets being criticised, and I found her littledaughter in a new frock looking in the glass. The experiment is conclus-ive, the demonstration is complete; there in the first generation is theartistic temperament-that is vanity, and there in the second generationis dress-and that is vanity. We should answer, My friend, all is vanityvanity and vexation of spirit-estwhen one has to listen to loof vour favourite kind. Obviously all human beings must value them-selves: and obviously there is in all such valuation an clement of weak-hess, since it is not the valuation of eternal justice. What is the use ofyour finding by experiment in some people a thing we know by reasonmust be in all of them?

Here it will be as well to pause a moment and avert one possible mfunderstanding. I do not mean that you and I cannot and do not practically see and personally remark on this or that eccentric or intermediatetype, for which the word feeble-minded might be a very convenientword, and might correspond to a genuine though indefinable fact of ex-perience. In the same way we might speak, and do speak, of such andsuch a person being mad with vanity without wanting two keepers towalk in and take the person off. But I ask the reader to remember alwaysthat I am talking of words, not as they are used in talk or novels, but asthey will be used and have been used in warrants and certificates, andActs of Parliament. The distinction between the two is perfectly clear andpractical. The difference is that a novelist or a talker can be trusted to tryand hit the mark; it is all to his glory that the cap should fit, that the tstshould be recognised; that he should, in a literary sense, hang the rightman. But it is by no means always to the interests of governments or offidials to hang the right man. The fact that they often do stretch words inorder to cover cases is the whole foundation of having any fixed laws orree institutions at all. My point is not that I have never met anyonewhom I should call feeble-minded, rather than mad or imbecile. Mypoint is that if I want to dispossess a nephew, oust a rival, silence ablackmailer, or get rid of an importunate widow, there is nothing in logicto prevent my calling them feeble-minded too. And the vaguer thecharge is the less they will be able to disprove it.One does not, as I have said, need to deny heredity in order to resistsuch legislation, any more than one needs to deny the spiritual world inorder to resist an epidemic of witch-burning. I admit there may be such athing as hereditary feeble-mindedness; I believe there is such a thing aswitchcraft. Believing that there are spirits, I am bound in mere reason tosuppose that there are probably evil spirits; believing that there are evilspirits, I am bound in mere reason to suppose that some men grow evilby dealing with them. All that is mere rationalism; the superstition(thatis the unreasoning repugnance and terror)is in the person who admfthere can be angels but denies there can be devils. The superstition is inthe person who admits there can be devils but denies there can be diab-olists. Yet I should certainly resist any effort to search for witches, for aerfectly simple reason, which is the key of the whole of this contreversy. The reason is that it is one thing to believe in witches, and quianother to believe in witch-smellers. I have more respect for the oldwitch-finders than for the Eugenists, who go about persecuting the foolof the famlly, because the witch-finders, according to their ownconviction, ran a risk. Witches were not the feeble-minded, but thestrong-minded-the evil mesmerists, the rulers of the elements. Many araid on a witch, right or wrong seemed to the villagers who did it arighteous popular rising against a vast spiritual tyranny, a papacy of sin.Yet we know that the thing degenerated into a rabid and despicable per-section of the feeble or the old. It ended by being a war upon the weak.It ended by being what Eugenics begins by being