"THE BETTERMENT OF LIFE."

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 430, 21 December 1889, Page 4

"THE BETTERMENT OF LIFE."

Rev. E. H. Gulliver delivered his third lecture on this subject to a largo audience in the Choral Hall on December loth., The lecturer said that for the last thirty years we had been familiar with the phrase ''survival of the fittest," and we knew that it referred to theories which were associated with the name of Darwin. The theory of evolution might not be the whole truth, but there were tew who would deny that it contained a very considerable patt of it. It simply expressed the obvious fact that in all departments of animated nature a constant struggle for existence was going on, and in that struggle those organisms which were moat suited to their surroundings survived their competitors. Geology showed us that many races of gigantic animals once "trod this earth and have now passed away for ever, leaving only their footprints or fossil remains. In the vegetable kingdom the story of the earth was the same, and indeed the process was going on under our eyes. Since the arrival of the Europeans in these islands tho native rat had given place to the European rab, and imported grasses had taken the place of the native herbage. Looking at man in the savjige state we caw the same law hold good absolutely, and under its operation the weak, the deformed, and the sickly died away, leaving the field to the strong and energetic ; but when we came to civilised life we found a very different state of things, and far from seeing now the " survival of the fittest " we saw what might be more truly called the " survival of the unfittest." There were many causes working to this result, and, with regard to one cause in particular, he was reminded of a curious old legend of Sfc Francis, of Assisi. The saint was riding one day along a country road in his native Italy, and met some poor wretch who was a leper. With an exclamation of horror he looked on the unfortunate, and passed on ; but ere he had gone many yards his heart smote him — the sense of human brotherhood compelled his sympathy to such an extent that, turning back to the leper, he fell on his knee 3 before him, kissed his poor leprous hands, and did all in his power to alleviate his sufferings. We were apt to doubt these old tales, but the story of Father Damien showed that the power of sympathy in his case impelled him to similar conduct. To a very considerable extent the present age was reproducing the action of St. Francis. There existed at the present time a wider sympathy with the weak, the erring, and the suffering than ever before ; there never was a time when men sympathised more deeply with their suffering fellow creatures, never a time when the cultured and tho wealthy were so ready to contribute to their relicf — never before were men so ready to tollow the example of Christ towardd the sick and sorrowful. The dogmas of Christianity mighb have lost their hold, but never before were men so willing to give effect to its practical side. Kow, what was the natural result of all this kindness and sympathy ? Simply this, it was going against Nature. It would seem a harsh thing to say, but the [ practical result was that multitudes who in the savage state would have died off under the operation of natural laws were now preserved — feeble, and incompetent though they were - to be the parents of succeeding generations. During the present century the population of our Fatherland had increased from eight or nine millions to over thirty millions, or move than trebled within the century, and this vast increase was mainly to be found in the large cities into whioh by the exigencies of our modern life the population was continually driven. The people who thus left peaceful country villages to sicken in city slums wore lured away from healthy country life by the hope of regular work and better wages in tho towns, and in most cases they were doomed to disappointment and half-starved. Bad ac this was for the unfortunates themselves, it was still worse for society at large, for from these people were proceeding the children who must be fche citizens of the future. When we thought of the hundreds of thousands of children born under these conditions in the east of London— children for whom the sun can scarcely be said to shine, whose infancy brings no joy and childhood no innocent brightness, whose youth must necessarily be spent in scenes of vice, misery, and degradation — must we not say, bard as it eeems to say it, that it would be better if they never reached manhood and womanhood ? Jn the Old World more especially, the course of nature was thus reversed,and instead of our modern life securing the permanence of the noblest and the best, it fosters the survival of those who are distinctly unfit. In olden times some great war or some all-destroying; pestilence like the black death would ere now have decimated our population, but with our modern sympathetic kindness and charity (to which all honour was none the less due), the sad result was reached of the "survival of the non-fittest." What was to be done ? Palliatives were useless ; we must go to the root of the matter, and meet the evil there. If we looked to the records of early Greece, we found the history of a nation who had the strength and energy to carry out as a plan of life, a system of their own — he spoke not of Athens, butof{3parta. From the age of seven years every child of Sparta was subject to the strictest discipline, and in all matters of clothing, drill and diet, everything was planned with the distinct aim of building up a nation of soldiers, and the result was a nation small indeed in numbers, but whose military heroism had become a proverb, and who had been able to hold their own in those tierce righting times for many centuries. This was simply owing to the splendid Spartan discipline which secured a development of strength seldom equalled and never excelled. In studying history, we were like bystanders watching a game at chess : the various moves were on record, and we could see where false moves and carelessness had led to loss and ruin, and how skill, intelligence, and discipline led steadily to victory. Unless we could by some means check this reversal of natural law — this upsetting of the order of nature— which gave us, not the best and noblest, nob the brave and strong, but rather the feeble, the puny, the degraded and the week as the parent* of the coming raee — we could expect only misery and disaster. As the farmer would be mad who disregarded the laws of heredity in crops or in stock, so must it be with our own race, and the Spartans knew it; and hence their extreme care and discipline in the training of their boys and girls. They of court* sought above all for physical strength, and we seek a higher ideal as our type of life ; but the law of heredity held good just the same, and it remained for ever true thatwe cannot gather grapes from thorns nor figs from thistle?. If we allowed a vast population to grovr up around us, never free from the horrible degradation ol poverty and misery, we might boast as we pleased of the triumphs of our civilisation in art, in literature, or in science, but above alj that, find' beyond all that, we might read plainly as though writtep across the face of heaven, the doom of ouj race !