l other qualities by natural selection. We are goaded into
activity by the conditions and struggles of life. They afford
stimuli that oppress and worry the weakly, who complain and bewail,
and it may be succumb to them, but which the energetic man welcomes
with a good-humoured shrug, and is the better for in the end.

The stimuli may be of any description: the only important matter is
that all the faculties should be kept working to prevent their
perishing by disuse. If the faculties are few, very simple stimuli
will suffice. Even that of fleas will go a long way. A dog is
continually scratching himself, and a bird pluming itself, whenever
they are not occupied with food, hunting, fighting, or love. In
those blank times there is very little for them to attend to besides
their varied cutaneous irritations. It is a matter of observation
that well washed and combed domestic pets grow dull; they miss the
stimulus of fleas. If animals did not prosper through the agency of
their insect plagues, it seems probable that their races would long
since have been so modified that their bodies should have ceased to
afford a pasture-ground for parasites.

It does not seem to follow that because men are capable of doing
hard work they like it. Some, indeed, fidget and fret if they cannot
otherwise work off their superfluous steam; but on the other hand
there are many big lazy fellows who will not get up their steam to
full pressure except under compulsion. Again, the character of the
stimulus that induces hard work differs greatly in different persons;
it may be wealth, ambition, or other object of passion. The solitary
hard workers, under no encouragement or compulsion except their
sense of duty to their generation, are unfortunately still rare
among us.

It may be objected that if the race were too healthy and energetic
there would be insufficient call for the exercise of the pitying and
self-denying virtues, and the character of men would grow harder in
consequence. But it does not seem reasonable to preserve sickly
breeds for the sole purpose of tending them, as the breed of foxes
is preserved solely for sport and its attendant advantages. There is
little fear that misery will ever cease from the land, or that the
compassionate will fail to find objects for their compassion; but at
present the supply vastly exceeds the demand: the land is
overstocked and overburdened with the listless and the incapable.

In any scheme of eugeni