Page:James Ramsay MacDonald - The Socialist Movement.pdf/248

 244 That is the unknown factor. There are signs of degeneration all around us. We cannot draw upon the reservoirs of good physique which once were available in large village populations; we have not that mental robustness which comes from fresh air, sound and plain food, and a contact with the invigorating life of nature, of fecund seed-time and joyful harvest, of tuneful spring and solemn winter. The family unity is weakened; the motherly housewife almost belongs to the blessings that were; the head of the household is becoming a survival of words that once had a meaning but are now but a reminiscence. The masculine strength of Puritanism has gone with its repulsive austerity, and education, planted on minds of impoverished soil, is producing sickly and weedy flowers of simpleton credulity and false imagination. The comforts which the too-wealthy seek are Byzantine; the pleasures which the too-poor follow unfit them for manly effort. Humanitarianism has forbidden nature to slay the weak; a lack of scientific forethought and foresight has prevented the community from raising the mass so that the surviving weak may not lower its virility. We are in the morasses of a valley and our salvation lies on the way up to the hills. "If mankind continue to improve"! We cannot go back; we can go on, or, standing, sink down in the morass.

Progress is possible in one of two ways. We may return to the mechanical selection of nature. We may say to the heart: "Be