Now, since all marked uniformity can result only from holding similar fundamental views, similar general principles, in common, if our wanderer wishes to pursue his observations he may be led to inquire from what substratum of guiding rules, from what basic values, this uniformity arises. If he is right in concluding that the population he sees about him—the people who are regarded as well and healthy, not the people who crowd our hospitals, asylums, and homes for cripples and incurables!—are largely sub-normal, or sub-human, in the sense that they are neither complete bodily nor capable of functioning without artificial aids; if, moreover, he is right in thinking that they do not seem to be much perturbed about their sub-humanity, he may wish to know the nature of the atmosphere in which their thoughts and ideals are formed. Their readiness to declare themselves “quite well,” or “quite fit,” simply on the strength of their not being under a doctor, or on a sick-bed, is singular. The question they ask themselves is not “Am I really quite fit or well?” but “Am I just able to discharge my daily duties, walk about, shop, have a family, and take ordinary meals?” If they can answer this question in the affirmative, they reply with no conscious insincerity that they are quite fit. Evidently, then, among this population of to-day there is no severe standard of good bodily condition, no cultivated taste about it. Or, if there is, it is surprisingly low. Defective functioning and incomplete bodily equipment no longer debars anybody from regarding himself, or from being regarded by others, as desirable and normal. Even in the vital matter of mating, this is so—how much more customary it must be, therefore, in less vital matters! Stand up, smile, and agitate your four limbs to indicate that they are intact and still movable, and that is enough. The bias against a whole list of defects and blemishes has completely disappeared. Moral depravity is still stigmatized. About physiological depravity, however, the world is frivolously indifferent. In the popular novels, which best reflect the spirit of the age, the heroine rejects a suitor, not because he has false teeth or chronic dyspepsia or varicose veins—such things are so common that they are never mentioned; but because he is “selfish,” or lacking in chivalry, or in “a sense of humour.” The hero whom she accepts may be less healthy, less complete anatomically than the man she rejects. He may also function less normally, have two or three false teeth and a furred tongue—in fact, he may be in every respect a much less desirable potential sire; but she considers his “soul,” as the expression goes; and every reader is satisfied that she behaves in the best possible way.