Page:A thousand years hence. Being personal experiences (IA thousandyearshen00gree).djvu/245

 and there was a gradual dissociation from connection with public charity. That latter aspect of the case had already been superseded, when the resanitated body had risen to conspicuous dimensions, and already included many of the most prominent citizens. There began, on the other hand, a natural tendency towards a special and separate order—the order, namely, of perfect sanitude in mind and body. But the ranks of this order remained always open to the like qualities from outside; and at length every one without, who could pass the due medical ordeal, pressed eagerly into the ranks of this natural nobility.

Centuries had thus passed, and a painful transition scene was evidently impending over society. Almost from the very first, the then despised nature's nobility had shown a disposition to intermarry amongst themselves. And what wonder! for where else were found such beautiful specimens of either sex? And now, when generations and centuries had done their further work, this custom of restrictive intermarriage became more and more the practice of the new order. The inevitable end began at last to heave in sight; for, on one side was this new order, which, in all its vigorous superiority of body and mind, had now entered upon the full supervision and command of society; on the other side a mass of human infirmity, from which the other section could hardly but feel increasingly impatient to be free. When those latter ruling powers not only rejected alliances for themselves with this distempered remnant of the old society, but at last, as a sanitary measure in the public interest, prohibited marriage amongst all its membership, the last vestiges of the old condition were finally to disappear.