As to the "laws of physical improvement requiring that we should get rid of sickly and deformed infants," they require that we should _prevent_ or improve, not that we should _kill_ them. _That_ would be to get rid of some of the finest intellectual and moral specimens of our human nature that have ever existed. And, even were this not the case, the heroism, the patience, the wisdom of our race have been more called forth by dealing with these and the like forms of evil than by almost anything else. The good of man in its highest sense cannot be attained by neglecting one set of laws or one aspect of man's nature and cultivating another. I entirely therefore agree that "you must take man as a whole." But this seems at variance with a celebrated author's next sentence "and make morality and the mind the _limit_ of physical improvement." If I were writing, I should use a word signifying the exact reverse; not limit, but expansion, enlargement, multiplication, master or informing spirit. As Plato says: the mind informs the body, owns the body, the body is the servant of the mind. How can the owner and the master be the limit? We must really pray for your conversion.... (_Benjamin Jowett to Miss Nightingale._) TORQUAY, _Oct._ 4.... What have I said to deserve such an outburst? I have no wish to shake the foundation of Society. What I think about these matters is feebly expressed in a part of Essay at the end of the introduction to the _Republic_. But when I come to a second edition I will express it better. [138] I have somewhat compressed the argument in this letter.