d, and knit together that inducement to crime will
cease. Others will treat the criminal "scientifically," ensuring reforms
at the rate of 100 per cent. with lightning-like rapidity. Which all
practically amounts to this, that the problem concerning the future of
the weak is shelved. To study it deeply would spoil our best theories
and therefore it must be got rid of. Dr Chapple has done nothing more
than shelve it, for as we have seen his remedy is both practically and
morally impossible. Like all others it betrays the selfish spirit. Like
them it regards the weak as if they were nothing less than an
intolerable incubus on society, a grit in its bearings. It may be that
our social advancement will account for this. In old time when
communities were small and fixed, the burden of nursing the helpless
necessarily fell upon those who were immediately related by ties of
blood or neighbourhood, but now the many changes in the method of living
and treatment, has made this to a large extent impossible. Institutions
have everywhere sprung up, and it is invariably to the advantage of our
sick and afflicted that we should commit them to these institutions,
which practice has engendered the belief that all our social obligations
can be discharged by monetary payment. Not for one moment need we
entertain the idea that this belief will ever become a dominating one.
Charitable influences are more powerful. Nor must we charge the authors
of selfish systems with being as uncharitable as their systems. They
give expression to a fairly strong and somewhat universal sentiment, a
sentiment which we would perhaps disown at once upon its being unmasked
and which many refuse to obey upon its appeal to them to act in
accordance with its principles. This indicates that society sees many of
its assailants in but a half-light. It observes neither their malice nor
strength but only a dark ugly form which irritates us and which we would
if we could banish by an act of will.

This being impossible we must meet our assailants in a clearer light and
destroy them. How can this be done, since it would mean the destruction
of evil and the powers of evil? Then it cannot be done, but since evil
feeds itself upon its victims we can greatly diminish its power and
influence by rescuing all who fall within its grasp. Many we know we
cannot rescue for there are certain types of disease mental and bodily
which defy our skill and some of all types of moral diseas