invariable

condition of all other forms of animal life. While he preys upon a
myriad of created things, there is no created thing that preys on him
and assists in keeping his excessive produc tiveness within the limits
of subsistence. Most 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,