contrary; while our forefathers
increased rapidly. On the other hand, we have, at least throughout the
middle ages, accounts of such swarms of cripples, lepers, deformed, and
other incapable persons, as to make some men believe that there were more
of them, in proportion to the population, than there are now. And it may
have been so. The strongest and healthiest men always going off to be
killed in war, the weakliest only would be left at home to breed; and so
an unhealthy population might spring up. And again--and this is a
curious fact--as law and order enter a country, so will the proportion of
incapables, in body and mind, increase. In times of war and anarchy,
when every one is shifting for himself, only the strongest and shrewdest
can stand. Woe to those who cannot take care of themselves. The fools
and cowards, the weakly and sickly, are killed, starved, neglected, or in
other ways brought to grief. But when law and order come, they protect
those who cannot protect themselves, and the fools and cowards, the
weakly and sickly, are supported at the public expense, and allowed to
increase and multiply as public burdens. I do not say that this is
wrong, Heaven forbid! I only state the fact. A government is quite
right in defending all alike from the brute competition of nature, whose
motto is--Woe to the weak. To the Church of the middle age is due the
preaching and the practice of the great Christian doctrine, that society
is bound to protect the weak. So far the middle age saw: but no further.
For our own times has been reserved the higher and deeper doctrine, that
it is the duty of society to make the weak strong; to reform, to cure,
and above all, to prevent by education, by sanitary science, by all and
every means, the necessity of reforming and of curing.

Science could not do that in the middle age. But if Science could not do
it, Religion would at least try to do the next best thing to it. The
monasteries were the refuges, whither the weak escaped from the
competition of the strong. Thither flocked the poor, the crippled, the
orphan, and the widow, all, in fact, who could not fight for themselves.
There they found something like justice, order, pity, help. Even the
fool and the coward, when they went to the convent-door, were not turned
away. The poor half-witted rascal, who had not sense enough to serve the
king, might still serve the abbot. He would be set to drive, plough, or
hew wood--p