_Darwinism_ versus _Poor-Relief_.--Many Darwinians oppose Poor-Relief. The interest of the community demands that its members should be physically, intellectually, and morally sound. Social evolution and social well-being depend upon the survival of the fittest. It follows from this that the interest of the community demands that we should prevent the birth of diseased and weakly individuals; and that if such individuals should nevertheless be born, the sooner they perish the better. If this were unconditionally true, we should have to admit that the relief of destitution is not merely useless to society, but is positively harmful. In many instances, by the application of medical skill and knowledge, it is possible, at considerable expenditure of effort, to keep alive sickly persons, those predisposed to crime, and those predisposed to particular diseases--persons who, in default of such special care, would inevitably have succumbed. Such defectives, attaining maturity, procreate their kind, producing a new generation of sickly individuals, with deficient powers of resistance. Such applications of medical science are doubtless valuable from the point of view of the individuals thus benefited, but they promote the deterioration of the race. This anti-eugenist influence is exerted in a twofold manner: not only are the defectives kept alive and enabled to procreate their kind, but these defectives utilise goods and services which would otherwise have been allotted to healthy persons, whereby these latter become less well able to found and rear families. The relief of destitution provides support for the weaker members of the community. Whereas, in default of public assistance, such persons would hesitate to marry, a generous public provision for the destitute facilitates the light-hearted increase of the lower classes of the population, since these latter feel justified in believing that, should the worst come to the worst, their children will be provided for by the community. In the relief of the destitute, the commodities devoted to the maintenance of the weak are taken away from the strong. In consequence of this deprivation, the strong find it necessary to limit their families--an example which the weak will not follow. Thus the relief of destitution favours a reversed selection. The relief of destitution also impairs the efficiency of the processes whereby the diseased and useless constituents are eliminated from the social organism, and this interference with eliminative processes is no less dangerous to the social than it is to the individual organism.