Transcribed from the 1874 W. Isbister & Co. edition by DavidPrice, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
by the
Rev. CHARLES KINGSLEY, f.l.s.,f.g.s.
Canon of Westminster
W. ISBISTER & CO.
56, LUDGATE HILL, LONDON
1874
[All rights reserved]
Whether the British race is improving or degenerating? What,if it seem probably degenerating, are the causes of so great an evil? How they can be, if not destroyed, at least arrested?—These arequestions worthy the attention, not of statesmen only and medical men,but of every father and mother in these isles. I shall say somewhatabout them in this Essay; and say it in a form which ought to be intelligibleto fathers and mothers of every class, from the highest to the lowest,in hopes of convincing some of them at least that the science of health,now so utterly neglected in our curriculum of so-called education, oughtto be taught—the rudiments of it at least—in every school,college, and university.
We talk of our hardy forefathers; and rightly. But they werehardy, just as the savage is usually hardy, because none but the hardylived. They may have been able to say of themselves—as theydo in a state paper of 1515, now well known through the pages of Mr.Froude—“What comyn folk of all the world may compare withthe comyns of England, in riches, freedom, liberty, welfare, and allprosperity? What comyn folk is so mighty, and so strong in thefelde, as the comyns of England?” They may have been fedon “great shins of beef,” till they became, as BenvenutoCellini calls them, “the English wild beasts.” Butthey increased in numbers slowly, if at all, for centuries. Thoseterrible laws of natural selection, which issue in “the survivalof the fittest,” cleared off the less fit, in every generation,principally by infantile disease, often by wholesale famine and pestilence;and left, on the whole, only those of the strongest constitutions toperpetuate a hardy, valiant, and enterprising race.
At last came a sudden and unprecedented change. In the firstyears of the century, steam and commerce produced an enormous increasein the population. Millions of fresh human beings found employment,married, brought up children who found employment in their turn, andlearnt to live more or less civilised lives. An event, doubtless,for which God is to be thanked. A quite new phase of humanity,bringing with it new vices and new dangers: but bringing, also, notmerely new comforts, but new noblenesses, new generosities, new conceptionsof duty, and of how that duty should be done. It is childish toregret the old times, when our soot-grimed manufacturing districts weregreen with lonely farms. To murmur at the transformation wouldbe, I believe, to murmur at the will of Him without whom not a sparrowfalls to the ground.
“The old order changeth, yielding place to thenew,
And God fulfils himself in many ways,
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.”
Our duty is, instead of longing for the good old custom, to takecare of the good new custom, lest it should corrupt the world in likewise. And it may do so thus:—
The rapid increase of population during the first half of this centurybegan at a moment when the British stock was specially exhausted; namely,about the end of the long French war. There may have been periodsof exhaustion, at least in England, before that. There may havebeen one here, as there seems to have been on the Continent, after theCrusades; and another after the Wars of the Roses. There was certainlya period of severe exhaustion at the end of Elizabeth’s reign,due both to the