Page:Sexology.djvu/32

 (a healthy mind in a healthy body), is the desideratum. The soul participates strongly in the vices of the body. Rosseau says, very truly, "The more feeble the body the more it commands; the stronger the body the more it obeys." Among savages and beasts, and even the lowest classes in civilized communities, the feeble or imperfect die before reproducing themselves, so the race is perpetuated only by the strong and healthy ; but with civilized nations, science preserves the existence of debilitated creatures, who marry and reproduce their similars. The art of medicine has altogether failed in that noble duty of bringing the feeble to the condition of the strong; in other words, of eradicating hereditary vices of constitution. The child who inherits the consumption of his father, surrounded by dangers which menace the lungs, is placed in conditions of temperature, air and exercise which are most directly calculated to develop his inherent malady. The son of the madman, in the place of enforced indolence, is daily crowded with excessive study. He who inherits intestinal disease, is delivered to a government of chance or caprice. Neither temperament, constitution, weakness, nor diseased proclivities of children are in any way studied or considered, either in families, or in public and private establishments. These facts apply with still greater force to the ignorant and poorer classes, but happily, with them, misery kills off the weaker, those who are not sufficiently strong to resist it. So we hear much of the health and vigor of the children of the poor. They are dying in hordes! but the blame should not rest wholly upon science. Little thought or attention is paid except for those who are actually and palpably ill ; and advice is unsought, and even despised, for those who are apparently well. When people learn to avail themselves of the means of preven-