significant of all, not even a parasite wages destructive warfare against him. That is, if we except from the classification the doctors' latest explanation {18} of the cause of everything, from pneumonia to laziness—the modest but effective bacillus. The bacillus, however, is much more a condition than a parasite.

This absence of destructive enemies must be compensated for in some way, and it is accomplished by making vicious inclinations the agents to weed out the redundant growths and to select for extermination those which are inferior, depraved, weak, and unfit for preservation or reproduction.

If five human beings are procreated where there is present room and provision but for three, how are the surplus {19} two to be picked out and exterminated?

Of course each one of us feels entirely competent to pick out in his own community the persons who could be best spared, but public opinion is at present hostile both to any practical plan of making the necessary thinning out, and also to lodging the power of selection in the hands of those of us best calculated for the duty.

APPARENTLY the surplus ones relieve us from embarrassment on this score by selecting to exterminate {20} themselves. Their methods of suicide cover a wide range of expedients but all are very effective.

And most beneficent of any of the facts connected with this subject is that each of those chosen for extermination embraces his fate with positive eagerness, under the delusion that he is about to enhance his own happiness.

Immoderate use of stimulants and the varied excesses and vital errors which are grouped under the general head of "dissipation," a "love of pleasure," or the still {21} more expressive phrase "a short life and a merry one," etc., are favorite ways of self-annihilation and leave little to be desired in the completeness with which they do their work.

English statisticians formerly estimated that if a man drank beer in large quantities it took him 21.7 years to kill himself, which period the whisky-drinker shortened to 16.1 years.

Closer study and wider knowledge have materially changed these conclusions, to the great detriment of beer. For once, and upon one point, the physicians of the world have agreed. American, English, and German doctors say with one voice that the most {22} hopeless patient who comes into their hands is the soaked, crapulous, beer-drinker. "Point out a gray-haired beer-drinker," they challenge, and challenge in vain. Gray-haired whisky-drinkers may be found, but not the others.

Starch in every stage of decay, carried by the all-penetrating alcohol, surcharges the tissues with putrefaction, and makes the tumid veins a forcing-ground for bacteria. Thus the beer-drinker's slight cold becomes at once pneumonia, or inflammatory rheumatism, or Bright's disease, and his life flickers out like a candle in a gusty passage.

Intemperance being among the milder vices kills slowly. Sexual sins slay {23} more rapidly, and the criminal grades of vice do their work with a swiftness in proportion to their flagrancy. The Psalmist says, "bloody and deceitful men shall not live out half their days," but police records will show that David materially overrates the average. "One quarter their days" would approach much nearer exactness.

RETURNING to the major premise that the "survival of the fittest" means the selection and preservation of those individuals who are most nearly in harmony with the conditions