Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 25.djvu/497

Rh the strong and the weak, the rulers and the ruled. As population becomes denser and denser, the contrast between the classes becomes still more marked, and we find in the cities poverty, hardship, and suffering, face to face with wealth, luxury, and ease. This is, in truth, the social problem. The sympathetic party, who regard this state of things in society as unjust and wrong, because unequal, invoke the assistance of Government, in State education, in public institutions, and in State Boards of Charities. The question may be stated thus: Does scientific philanthropy render the vital competition between man and man more unequal? Or, as a question for the legist, it becomes: What public duty of relief does the State owe to its citizens? It seems to us that these questions constitute the problem of philanthropy in its widest significance, and no apology is needed for treating them in detail.

M. Fouillée has fallen into the common error of supposing Malthus a determined enemy of all charity, quite overlooking the fact that he has devoted a most appreciative chapter to "the direction" of our benevolence (Bk. IV, chapter ix). As currently reported, the Malthusian theory would exclude all notion of public relief. Pushed to the extreme, it asserts that when the improvident bring into the world human beings for whom there is no subsistence, then we should leave to Nature, and not to man, the duty of dealing with the surplus of individuals. The Government should not step in and provide for the foolish improvidence of the father. To do so would only act as an encouragement to the lower classes to multiply at a faster rate than the better members of society. Moreover, it is quite irreligious to suppose a good Creator would in this way increase the miseries and privations of life. It is His justice to cut off those who have not "the slightest right to any share in the existing store of the necessaries of life."

Malthus aptly illustrates that all men are Nature's guests; but some are entitled to partake of the viands, while others stand uninvited, no covers being laid for them "at the great banquet of Nature." Here Philanthropy interposes and asks what right have the first guests at free banquet, after they are filled, to keep others from coming for their share? In the struggle for seats at Nature's banquet, shall the strong and vigorous turn back the chairs, and refuse to let the weak partake? Philanthropy insists that there is plenty of room at Nature's table, and that all men shall participate in a feast where priority gives no one any exclusive right. Vita sedat, uti conviva satur.

These arguments seem at first glance unpitying, especially to tender-hearted people, who deplore the harsh manner in which Nature punishes ignorance and incompetency as rigorously as froward disobedience. M. Fouillée is indignant over the effort of Malthus to show us the justice of Nature's discipline, whereby in the poverty of the