Time does not stay nor punishment make it less. In fact the older the community and the better settled and undisturbed its life, the greater the number of these unfortunates whom, for some mysterious reason, the Infinite has decreed a life of shame and a death of ignominy and dishonor. If scaffolds and prisons and judges and jailers have no effect to prevent and lessen crime, common wisdom, to say nothing of humane instincts, ought to seek some other plan. Intelligent men have long since ceased to believe in miracle or chance. Whatever they may think of ancient miracles and the original chance that brought the universe into being, still most people now believe that the world’s affairs, be they small or great, physical, intellectual, or moral, come within the realm of law. In the ordinary affairs of life, men everywhere seek the causes that produce effects. Men are called into being, live their lives and pass away in obedience to natural laws which are as immutable as the movement of the tides. In our half civilized condition we partially comprehend this fact. The defect of the born cripple, the idiot, the insane is no longer charged to the poor victim who, unhampered by the world, still has a burden as heavy as should be given to mortal man to bear. The physician who would treat fever or measles or diphtheria without considering the cause would be considered the veriest bungler and responsible for his patient’s death. It is not so very long ago that a world about as intelligent as our own believed that disease, deformity, and sin came from the same cause,—some sort of an evil spirit that found its abode in man. The way to destroy the evil spirit was generally to destroy the man. The world will perhaps grow wise enough to not only believe that disease, deformity, and sin have a common cause, but perhaps so wise as to find their common cause. No skilful physician called to the bedside of a child suffering with scarlet fever would upbraid the child for the evil spirit that caused its pain; no more would he punish the consumptive for his hacking cough; he would understand perfectly well that the physical condition of each was due to some natural cause, and that the disease could be cured in these patients and avoided with others only when the cause was destroyed, or so well known that no one need fall a victim to the malady. Even in diseases of the most contagious sort, where the isolation of the patient is necessary to protect the lives and health of others, this isolation would be accomplished not in hatred or malice but in the greatest tenderness and love, and the isolation would last only for the purpose of a cure and a sufficient time for cure; and every pains would be taken to destroy and stamp out the cause which produced the disease.