Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 28.djvu/395

Rh little exaggeration, brothers and sisters. If we could be told, as we meet the passers in the streets, how near their relationship to us is, we should get a succession of surprises. We should cease to think of them as strangers and aliens, and come to feel that they were our own kith and kin. Every person would have an interest for us as a relative not far removed, and the charm of social life would be wonderfully increased.

The fact of our close kinship, as a nation, and also as a race, is calculated to stimulate philanthropy very powerfully. It is acknowledged that the nearer the relationship the greater is the claim fur help, if help be needed. Even self-love comes to the aid of generosity; it is felt that what a man does for his own relations is in a measure done for himself; the disgrace of neglecting them acts as a useful spur to liberality. Advocates of slavery have vindicated their obnoxious system by maintaining the absolute inferiority of the enslaved. Caste in India has been fortified by notions of a vast and essential difference between the various orders. Oneness in nature appeals for respect and association. The oneness which is proved and emphasized by near relationship makes the strongest appeal to the interest of the mind and the sympathy of the heart. Creatures of the same kind draw together. The further a people are from us, geographically or relatively, the less ordinarily is our regard for their welfare, our concern over their calamities. The improved facilities for intercourse are destroying the effect of geographical distance; the realization of the fact that all the world are near akin will help immensely to lessen the social distance.

The close kinship of mankind especially in the same nation has an important bearing on one or two points of theology. Since mental and physical tendencies are transmissible by hereditary descent, this kinship gives to the doctrine of natural depravity an awful significance, and shows the causes of taint to our blood to be near us in time instead of being removed altogether away to the beginning of the world. If all the moral weaklings of the land who lived seven hundred years ago, all the vile and vicious, all the wild beasts in human shape, and an unknown number of such in the ages intervening, were our direct ancestors, it is not to be wondered at that unhappy propensities stir, and strive, and struggle for mastery in every man's breast. It is singular that orthodox theologians should overlook this recent pressing source of depravity to dwell on the influence upon us of an original pair living before historical times. It is equally strange that unorthodox ones should deny the existence of depravity communicated from that remote period on the ground of its supposed injustice, when it is undeniable that we are reached by ten thousand impure channels so near at hand. The question arises, How is it that the depravity fed from so many sources has not resulted before now in the complete corruption and disintegration of the race? We are able to encourage ourselves by remembering the vast amount of excellency in recent times with which we are in direct communication; the heroes, saints, and martyrs, to say nothing of the