isa-normaladvance-1903-00043

Description:	THE NORMAL ADVANCE.43mands that they be not less strict but more just.An easier world would be one in which idleness,vice, and inefficiency would fare better andvirtue, energy and efficiency correspondinglyworse. A more just world would see that each ofthese characteristics received their proper reward.Our colleges have not made it easier to get degrees because some fail. They have sought bettermethods of judging the real worth of the studentand have thus made a degree mean much morethan it once did. Likewise civilization is to seethat success goes only to the deserving and thatthe deserving dp succeed.It is easy to form indictments against our social conditions but it should be remembered thatthey are the best that the civilization of Europeand America has been able to make them. It hastaken the evolution of ages for man to work themout as they are now. Better conditions will require better men. Better relations will only bepossible with better material in humanity.But after we take away all the failures due tothe unjustice of our social conditions, there stillremains a large percent. These fail because theyare unable to make themselves useful, because theyare unable to adapt themselves to the social conditions around them. They have so varied that theyare unable to help themselves. As every tree mayhave its withered branches so in any family theremay be those who vary toward incapacity but inwhatever station of life these incapables arefound, they must be borne by those who are capable or else they perish the victims of misery theycan make no effort to avoid. Those whom societymust support may be divided roughly into twoclasses, criminals and paupers. The second shesupports voluntarily and the first because shelacks adequate means of self protection.By this it will be seen that pauperism and poverty are by no means the same thing. Povertymay be due to temporary causes and the individual may have within himself the force to lift himself out of his condition. A man may be poorbecause of accident, sickness, or misfortune andcan be restored to his place of usefulness in society. The pauper is unable to help himself andthe more he is helped the more his pauperism isintensified. He cannot be helped to a permanentplace of Usefulness in society. He is a degeneratehuman being.There are many conditions that may plunge theaverage man from a condition of helpfulness intopauperism. Sickness, dissipation, the weaknessof old age will do it. We are none too well equipped for the struggle for life at best and the lossof weapons or armor may make any man helplessfor the time being. But some are helpless frombirth. In the submerged tenth of every land maybe found the broken in body and spirit but themajority of these have never been, could never beanything else than what they are. They are incapable and are probably the descendants of otherswho in similar conditions would have been incapable. In a world of work where clear thinking and a clear conscience are necessary, theyfound themselves without capacity of mind, without a sense of justice and without a desire to action. They are born to misery and the aggregateof misery would have been sensibly less had theynever been born.It is one of the deep seated facts of biology that,whenever the range of competition is narrowedand the incentive to action is withdrawn, degeneration sets in. It takes place whenever a relaxation of the struggle for existence makes possiblelife on a lower plane. Among animals thischange for the worse, this step directly opposed toprogress is very common.Perhaps the most remarkable case of animaldegeneration is the sacculina. The sacculine is amember of the crab family although from theadult form no one would ever guess it. In thisform, it has nothing that could be called a head orlegs, and its body is a mere sack filled with thereproductive organs. During the early part ofits life it is a free swimming, active little animalwith all the characteristics of a young crab butat a certain period, it attaches itself to anothercrab, sends arms into the tissues of its host, soonloses head and legs, and degenerates into the formdescribed above. It has taken on a parasitic lifeand when parasitism is once begun the struggle
Source:	http://indstate.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/isuarchive/id/33784
Collection:	Indiana State University Archives

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