It is true that attempts have been made to withhold even this sympathy, as in the case of the second commandment already referred to above; but the best instance is that of David’s famous observation in the 37th Psalm: “I have been young, and now am old; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken nor his seed begging bread.” This, however, is so obviously a desperate endeavour to square a moral reading of the universe, or the conception of an eternal justice behind all phenomena, with the spectacle of misery and indigence, that its transparency offends the dullest vision. It is not unlike the attitude of some Eugenists who would argue that the poorly remunerated of to-day should be prevented from multiplying because they are not only the _unfit_, but the _undesirable_. To call them unfit is biologically correct; for it merely amounts to saying that they are unadapted to their environment. The idea of undesirability is, however, smuggled in gratuitously, only in order to try to account for what would otherwise appear an injustice. If the poor be made to appear as lying under a stigma, [p48] the difficulty presented by the apparent injustice of their position is easily removed.[7] In the same way the necessity of condoling with an invalid is unconsciously resented by most of us when we endeavour, particularly to the invalid’s face, to ascribe his or her trouble to some glaring imprudence or violation of rational living, through which we infer that the illness or indisposition has been brought about. We thus reduce it to a pain or penalty that the sufferer has _deserved_, and in this way we release our minds from the constant preoccupation concerning justice and injustice. Women, who are very much less social in their instincts, and, therefore, much harder than men, repeatedly behave in this way, even with their own children; and before they make a movement to relieve suffering, their lips will have pronounced innumerable reasons why the particular indisposition or pain confronting them is the sufferer’s own fault. Why did David say that he had never seen the righteous forsaken nor his seed begging bread? Why do certain Eugenists try their hardest to attach some stigma to poverty, or to what they call the poorly remunerated? And why do people suddenly heap all kinds of blame upon the head of an unfortunate man, woman or child, who has suddenly contracted an illness? It is suggested that the reason is because the acceptance of the view that there is a moral order to the universe, implies two conditions: (_a_) That nothing occurs that is not just; (_b_) that, therefore, there is no suffering that is not in some way retribution or penalty.