more plausible sense than the mere harmless "deficient"; and
to hand on the horrors of his anarchic and insatiable temperament is a
much graver responsibility than to leave a mere inheritance of
childishness. I would not arrest such tyrants, because I think that
even moral tyranny in a few homes is better than a medical tyranny
turning the state into a madhouse. I would not segregate them, because
I respect a man's free-will and his front-door and his right to be
tried by his peers. But since free-will is believed by Eugenists no
more than by Calvinists, since front-doors are respected by Eugenists
no more than by house-breakers, and since the Habeas Corpus is about
as sacred to Eugenists as it would be to King John, why do not _they_
bring light and peace into so many human homes by removing a demoniac
from each of them? Why do not the promoters of the Feeble-Minded Bill
call at the many grand houses in town or country where such nightmares
notoriously are? Why do they not knock at the door and take the bad
squire away? Why do they not ring the bell and remove the dipsomaniac
prize-fighter? I do not know; and there is only one reason I can think
of, which must remain a matter of speculation. When I was at school,
the kind of boy who liked teasing half-wits was not the sort that
stood up to bullies.

That, however it may be, does not concern my argument. I mention the
case of the strong-minded variety of the monstrous merely to give one
out of the hundred cases of the instant divergence of individual
opinions the moment we begin to discuss who is fit or unfit to
propagate. If Dr. Saleeby and I were setting out on a segregating trip
together, we should separate at the very door; and if he had a
thousand doctors with him, they would all go different ways. Everyone
who has known as many kind and capable doctors as I have, knows that
the ablest and sanest of them have a tendency to possess some little
hobby or half-discovery of their own, as that oranges are bad for
children, or that trees are dangerous in gardens, or that many more
people ought to wear spectacles. It is asking too much of human nature
to expect them not to cherish such scraps of originality in a hard,
dull, and often heroic trade. But the inevitable result of it, as
exercised by the individual Saleebys, would be that each man would
have his favourite kind of idiot. Each doctor would be mad on his own
madman. One would have his eye on devotional curates; an