rigid laws were passed in regard to the practice of medicine.
No physician could become a practitioner until examined and authorized
to do so by the State Medical College. In order to prevent favoritism,
or the furnishing of diplomas to incompetent applicants, enormous
penalties were incurred by any who would sign such. The profession long
ago became extinct. Every mother is a family physician. That is, she
obeys the laws of nature in regard to herself and her children, and they
never need a doctor.

"Having become healthy and independent of charity, crime began to
decrease naturally. The conditions that had bred and fostered petty
crimes having ceased to exist, the natures that had inherited them rose
above their influence in a few generations, and left honorable
posterity.

"But crime in its grossest form is an ineradicable hereditary taint.
Generation after generation may rise and disappear in a family once
tainted with it, without displaying it, and then in a most unexpected
manner it will spring up in some descendant, violent and unconquerable.

"We tried to eliminate it as we had disease, but failed. It was an
inherited molecular structure of the brain. Science could not
reconstruct it. The only remedy was annihilation. Criminals had no
posterity."

"I am surprised," I interrupted, "that possessing the power to control
the development of the body, you should not do so with the mind."

"If we could we would produce genius that could discover the source of
all life. We can control Cause and Effect, but we cannot create Cause.
We do not even know its origin. What the perfume is to the flower, the
intellect is to the body; a secret that Nature keeps to herself. For a
thousand years our greatest minds have sought to discover its source,
and we are as far from it to-day as we were a thousand years ago."

"How then have you obtained your mental superiority?" I inquired.

"By securing to our offspring perfect, physical and mental health.
Science has taught us how to evolve intellect by following demonstrated
laws. I put a seed into the ground and it comes up a little green slip,
that eventually becomes a tree. When I planted the seed in congenial
soil, and watered and tended the slip, I assisted Nature. But I did not
create the seed nor supply the force that made it develop into a tree,
nor can I define that force."

"What has produced the exquisite refinement of your people?"

"Like everything else, it is the