Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 30.djvu/783

Rh for existence. The dirt and discomfort, in the midst of which thousands live at our very doors, would, astound many among the better classes who are always wondering at the shiftlessness of the poor. A suggestive paper was read before the British Medical Association in 1885, showing the large influence that bodily comfort has in lowering the death-rate. The same influences that can increase mortality among the poor are also operative in curtailing their efficiency and usefulness.

2. .—Some of our modern materialistic philosophers would have us believe that mind is a function of body—a sort of secretion of the brain. While this bald conception will not commend itself to many, it certainly is true that mind acts through nervous organization, the integrity of which stands in a direct relation to the most efficient mental manifestation. In the physical growth of man a completely developed brain is the highest type of organization. The normal action of the mind is much modified by the health or disease of the nervous elements, which are constantly affected by the condition of the vital organs. As a rule, therefore, an efficient mind is an accompaniment of a well-acting body. It is true that brute strength is frequently seen accompanied by signs of only inferior mental life, but in such cases the evolution of the higher nerve-centers, together with proper education of the mind, has been in abeyance for generations, with resulting stagnation. In the intensely close competitions of the present day a certain mental acumen is absolutely necessary to attain any measure of success. The man who has not the mental equipment to figure a close bargain will as inevitably succumb to the one who can, as the bird with the longest beak or strongest claw will vanquish its weaker antagonist. The physically and mentally weak inevitably yield before the law of the survival of the fittest in our modern civilization. This law may be more immediately apparent in its action on physical than on mental life, yet it is as real in one as in the other sphere. Hereditary taint and bad hygienic surroundings produce in many such a condition of weak lungs as to develop, by the ordinary and necessary exposure of life, the disease known as consumption. Death results, and such people die because their lungs are not fit, or strong enough, to survive in the conditions of their environment. Our dispensaries and hospitals are now crowded with such unfortunates who are bound to succumb, sooner or later, to this unerring natural law. Persons with vigorous lungs, who can do the world's work and thrive under conditions that destroyed the former class, are living examples of a physical survival of the fittest. But there is just as much a mental as a physical exemplification of this law. The dull wit can not be made to accomplish that which is easily done by the acute mind—can not live the same life. A man who digs a canal must, in order to do the only thing within his capacity for earning a living, become the tool of the mentally "fitter" man—the engineer—who has the intellectual skill to plan such a work. Disgusted at his