ld is much worse than
most of my neighbours' children, except that physical discomfort makes
him fretful. What you call selfishness in him is only the natural
inheritance derived from an ancestry who for some hundred generations
have certainly never cared for anything or any one but themselves. I
thought I had explained to you by what train of circumstances and of
reasoning family affection, such as it is reputed to have been
thousands of years ago, has become extinct in this planet; and, family
affection extinguished, all weaker sentiments of regard for others
were very quickly withered up."

"You told me something of the kind," I said; "but the idea of a life
so utterly swallowed up in self that no one even thinks it necessary
to affect regard for and interest in others, was to me so
unintelligible and inconceivable that I did not realise the full
meaning of your account. Nor even now do I understand how a society
formed of such members can be held together. On Earth we should expect
them either to tear one another to pieces, or to relapse into
isolation and barbarism lower than that of the lowest tribe which
preserves social instincts and social organisation. A society composed
of men resembling that child, but with the intelligence, force, and
consistent purpose of manhood, would, I should have thought, be little
better than a congregation of beasts of prey."

"We have such beasts," said Esmo, "in the wild lands, and they are
certainly unsociable and solitary. But men, at least civilised men,
are governed not only by instinct but by interest, and the interest of
each individual in the preservation of social co-operation and social
order is very evident and very powerful. Experience and school
discipline cure children of the habit of indulging mere temper and
spite before they come to be men, and they are taught by practice as
well as by precept the absolute necessity of co-operation. Egotism,
therefore, has no tendency to dissolve society as a mere organisation,
though it has utterly destroyed society as a source of pleasure."

"Does your law," I asked, "confine the principle of euthanasia to
infants, or do you put out of the world adults whose life is supposed,
for one reason or another, to be useless and joyless?"

"Only," he answered, "in the case of the insane. When the doctors are
satisfied that a lunatic cannot be cured, an inquest is held; and if
the medical verdict be approved, he is quietly and painless