In the main, the very finest children of The Poor succumb. Because the higher the organism, the more complex and delicately-fitted to its vital needs its life-conditions require to be. Briars flourish where rose-trees die. Degenerate children struggle through where better types go under. We are not ready, it is true, for exotic humans. But we need urgently, indeed, all the healthy, intelligent, well-balanced stock we can produce. A certain uniformity of type is secured by the expedients of Natural Selection; by that continual correction of premature evolutionary unfoldment which results from the checks and prunings of developmental exigencies--in the necessary acclimatisation and adaptation of the young and tender organism to environment. And Nature herself provides all the checks and prunings required, in her tests of teething, of measles, and the other diseases and trials of infancy and childhood. The respiration-curves and the brain pulse-waves of young infants show serious disturbance as result of sudden loud noises. The consequent nervous jar perturbs both breathing and circulation. The whole organisation of an infant is so delicate and is so subtly balanced as to require the gentlest possible treatment. One sees on the faces of infants and young children a chronic look of painful expectancy. Their brows are knitted as though to brace their hyper-sensitive systems for the next distressing shock. Women accustomed to hard, laborious work (or sports) lose power to adjust their movements to these delicate needs. And when, unkind and impatient, they fly at the unfortunates and shake or beat or scold them violently, they have no suspicion that for hours afterwards, perhaps for days, the children's nervous systems may be so shattered and disorganised, digestion and assimilative powers so impaired, as to interfere gravely with growth and development. Degrees of "shock," akin to shell-shock, result from such maternal violence and chronic terrorism; occasioning feeble-mindedness, morbid timidity, mental hebetude and, moreover, subconscious impressions, which, later in life, may emerge as obsessions, or as other forms of insanity. Fear is the most shattering and paralysing of the emotions. Yet not only brought up by hand, the majority of our little ones are brought up by _violent_ hand.