and Indians--and a good many of their
own race as a kind of self-conscious blood-clocks with very limited power
of self-determination. That's the tendency, I say, of a doctor's
experience. But the people to whom they address their statements of the
results of their observation belong to the thinking class of the highest
races, and they are conscious of a great deal of liberty of will. So in
the face of the fact that civilization with all it offers has proved a
dead failure with the aboriginal races of this country,--on the whole, I
say, a dead failure,--they talk as if they knew from their own will all
about that of a Digger Indian! We are more apt to go by observation of
the facts in the case. We are constantly seeing weakness where you see
depravity. I don't say we're right; I only tell what you must often find
to be the fact, right or wrong, in talking with doctors. You see, too,
our notions of bodily and moral disease, or sin, are apt to go together.
We used to be as hard on sickness as you were on sin. We know better
now. We don't look at sickness as we used to, and try to poison it with
everything that is offensive, burnt toads and earth-worms and
viper-broth, and worse things than these. We know that disease has
something back of it which the body isn't to blame for, at least in most
cases, and which very often it is trying to get rid of. Just so with
sin. I will agree to take a hundred new-born babes of a certain stock
and return seventy-five of them in a dozen years true and honest, if not
'pious' children. And I will take another hundred, of a different stock,
and put them in the hands of certain Ann-Street or Five-Points teachers,
and seventy-five of them will be thieves and liars at the end of the same
dozen years. I have heard of an old character, Colonel Jaques, I believe
it was, a famous cattle-breeder, who used to say he could breed to pretty
much any pattern he wanted to. Well, we doctors see so much of families,
how the tricks of the blood keep breaking out, just as much in character
as they do in looks, that we can't help feeling as if a great many people
hadn't a fair chance to be what is called 'good,' and that there isn't a
text in the Bible better worth keeping always in mind than that one,
'Judge not, that ye be not judged.'

"As for our getting any quarter at the hands of theologians, we don't
expect it, and have no right to. You don't give each other any quarter.
I have had two