even blames vaccination because it has preserved thousands who might
otherwise have succumbed (for the benefit of the race?). Can you imagine
anything more brutal? And then note the low level of the argument. "No
one who has attended the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that
this must be highly injurious to the race of man." All on a brute basis.

His hypothesis breaks down here. The minds which, according to Darwin,
are developed by natural selection and sexual selection, use their power
to suspend the law by which they have reached their high positions.
Medicine is one of the greatest of the sciences and its chief object is
to save life and strengthen the weak. That, Darwin complains, interferes
with "the survival of the fittest." If he complains of vaccination, what
would he say of the more recent discovery of remedies for typhoid fever,
yellow fever and the black plague? And what would he think of saving
weak babies by pasteurizing milk and of the efforts to find a specific
for tuberculosis and cancer? Can such a barbarous doctrine be sound?

But Darwin's doctrine is even more destructive. His heart rebels against
the "hard reason" upon which his heartless hypothesis is built. He says:
"The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly the
result of the instinct of sympathy, which was originally acquired as a
part of the social instincts, but subsequently rendered in the manner
indicated, more tender and more widely diffused. Nor could we check our
sympathy even at the urging of hard reason, without deterioration in
the noblest part of our nature. The surgeon may harden himself while
performing an operation, for he knows he is acting for the good of
his patient; but if we were to intentionally neglect the weak and the
helpless, it could be only for a contingent benefit, with overwhelming
present evil. We must therefore bear the undoubted bad effects of the
weak surviving and propagating their kind."