machinery almost exclusively in favour of the owner of the machine; and this it is that has caused the great inequality of distribution.

develop somewhat more than one-horse power. Hence the sun-shine that falls on the roofs of Philadelphia, he calculates, would keep going 5,000 steam engines of twenty-horse power each. This suggests many reflections; it is at once clear that all the gloomy forebodings about the exhaustion of our coal may be entirely dismissed. The Laputians it is, I think, that Dean Swift represents as being employed in extracting the sun's rays from cucumbers; it appears we need not resort to this, but every man may have a little apparatus-of one-horse power-on the top of his house, which, with machinery judiciously applied to every room, may do all the drudgery and household work of the establishment. This one-horse will not require to be fed on anything but sun's rays, and daylight always contains a sufficient supply of them. It must not be supposed that wives would then go out of fashion; they might, on the contrary, for the first time take their proper place. If man is the "power" in the world, woman is the "beauty"-the æsthetic is properly her department.

But such a power need not be confined to domestic uses. In India, in the temples of Buddha, the prayers are done my machinery, which is kept going night and day. Here it has been calculated that a onehorse sun power, or even less-a one-ass power-on the top of our churches, would probably be enough to preach all the sermons. The ideas in our ordinary sermons are so few and simple that they might readily be set to machinery, and ground out every Sunday for the benefit of those very young people who are not yet familiar with them-thus releasing a considerable amount of ecclesiastical force that now undoubtedly might be applied to better purposes. Good sermons may be purchased in lithograph at from 5s. a dozen. I am rather surprised, therefore, at the following, which I take from the Pall Mall Gazette, April 28, 1871 :

66

Clergymen with a small stock of sermons frequently speculate too boldly on the shortness of their hearers' memories, but they probably seldom carry the practice so far as the reverend gentleman whose sermons have been subjected by one of his congregation, 'a great statist and an old resident,' to the following minute classification. A friend of the 'great statist' thus reports the result of his inquiries 'His theory is that during thirteen years of the present incumbency, the general stock of sermons possessed by the vicar has been preached

:

APPLICATION OF PRINCIPLES.

66

315

We have now only to draw the legitimate deductions from the above, and to see how we may best further nature's plan in the production of the largest amount of happiness in the world. As far as we are individually concerned we shall perhaps do this by losing sight of happiness altogether, and not taking it into account at all. The objects of our desires are all closely marked in our constitution and organisation, and not one of these desires is the desire for happiness. It is upon this partial truth that the anti-utilitarian rides off forty-eight times, or, as he says, has made forty-eight revolutions, and that they are already far advanced in the forty-ninth cycle. He thinks that when they have gone through fifty revolutions they wil be tolerably well worn out-seeing that they were ancient when they came into the possession of the present owner. He considers that he has accurately fixed the date of their composition, which he believes to be between the thirty-fifth and fortieth years of George III., or about seventy-five years ago. Two of them, which are known as the "Astronomical Sermons," he says, are taken from Derham's Astro Theology," published in 1786, and abound with the errors of that date. Another is supposed to have been written on the occasion of the earthquake at Lisbon, and is known as the "Trembling Sermon," being suited to occasions of public calamity. It has already done duty on the occasions of two revolutions in Spain, twice for commercial panics in England, once for the Crimean war, and recently for the Franco-German War, with a few other similar occasions. They are taken from some early numbers of the Church Magazine.”” We have not yet been able to tame the Lightning; it has proved itself at present a little too eratic in its course for daily use. A correspondent of Nature, however, draws attention to an important discovery made by an American, which bids fair to supply the want of a portable motive power for machinery. At the last exhibition of the American Institute, it seems, there was shown an elliptic lockstitch sewing machine driven by an electric engine small enough to fit into a common hatbox : "A series of eight magnets are set on the periphery of a circle, and around these revolves an armature of steel which is continuously propelled by the magnetic action, and thus operates the machinery that moves the needle. Connection with this motor is had by means of a small slide within reach of the operator, at whose will the current may be cut off entirely or the speed of the needle graduated as may be desired.”

triumphantly. We love our wife, children, and friends-not happiness, but the love of them produces happiness.

We have seen that from the commencement of animal life in the world, pleasurable sensibility has increased with the increase in size of the nervous system, and intelligence and wants have increased with the happiness dependent upon their gratification with increased speciality of structure. This is still the law. What we want to grow is more brains; not at the expense of any other bodily powers, but proportionate to them: a sound mind in a sound body. But we not only want more brains, but we want those parts of the brain especially developed that are connected with the highest attributes of man-the intellect and moral feeling. In fact, we want to improve the breed of men, our attention hitherto having been almost exclusively devoted to dogs and horses, sheep and short-horns. We can produce almost any variety of plants, flowers, and fruits, and almost any form in animals; but all such laws are entirely ignored as far as man is concerned. Providence is supposed to take this department of science entirely into its own hands. We have only to procure a marriage license, and we may without any kind of censure bring any number of decrepid, imbecile, insane, scrofulous, and otherwise diseased children into the world; and yet from this ignorance and neglect arise half the ills that flesh is heir to. Darwin says: "For my part I conclude that of all the causes that have led to the differences in external appearance between the races of man, and to a certain extent between man and the lower animals, sexual relation has been by far the most efficient." * But Mr. Darwin throws very little additional light upon the laws that ought to regulate this selection between men and women, and I must confess to considerable disappointment, as I have been looking. forward with great interest, expecting great revelations in his book on sex.

We have not yet got much beyond the great "Descent of Man," vol. 2, p. 384.

HEREDITARY DESCENT.

66

317

principle of all breeders who have greatly improved our domestic animals, viz., that "like breeds like," although it is by the variations from this rule that the greatest improvements are effected. Colour, form, size, texture of hair or wool, proportions of various parts, strength or weakness of constitution, tendency to fatten or to remain lean, to give much or little milk, speed, strength, temper, intelligence, special instincts; there is not one of these characters whose transmission is not an every-day occurrence within the experience of cattle breeders, stock-farmers, horse dealers, and dog and poultry fanciers.” * No doubt in man, as in animals, we may improve a property by cultivation, and transmit it in its improved form to posterity; and this power may be greatly increased by a judicious sexual selection. Mr. Darwin tells us that"in the case of corporeal structures it is the selection of the slightly better-endowed and the elimination of the slightly less well-endowed individuals, and not the preservation of strongly marked and rare anomalies, that leads to the advancement of a species." He says it is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneracy of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed. Much depends upon his choice of a wife, but a man's physical and mental condition also before marriage, and a woman's health and whole mental state during the period of gestation affect the coming child. Twins are often alike bodily and mentally, and yet differ widely from other members of the same family, which shows how much depends upon the mother and the circumstances in which she is placed. How little is at present known of, and how much less even do we care for, the natural laws by which beauty, health, and intellect result from certain unions,

and deformity, disease, and insanity from others.* We ought to know at what age it is best to marry; what physical and mental temperaments should be brought together, and what mode of treatment and feeding is best during the period of gestation. But of these things at present we have little or no record. Darwin, however, tells us that "children born of mothers during the prime of life are heavier and larger, and therefore probably more vigorous, than those born at other periods." There can be no doubt that the military regulations, and the laws enforced with respect to marriage in many of the German States, have very much improved the

* "Our aristocracy, by exclusive intermarriages among ancient families, proceed blindly to breed in contempt of deformities, of feeble intellect, or of hereditary madness, under the instigation of pride, or the love of wealth, until their race becomes extinct; while another portentous curse, that of unwholesome factories, threatens to deteriorate the once brave manhood of England. I believe that, among mankind, as well as domesticated animals, there are physical and moral influences which may be regulated so as to improve or predispose both the corporeal and moral aptitudes; and certainly the most obvious cause is that of selecting the fit progenitors of both sexes."-(Sir A. Carlisle, in a letter to Mr. Alex. Walker "On Intermarriage.")

The Right Hon. B. Disraeli, in "Lothair," that rather clever satire of his on the upper classes, says: "It is the first duty of á state to attend to the frame and health of the subject. The Spartans understood this. They permitted no marriage the probable consequences of which might be a feeble progeny; they even took measures to secure a vigorous one. The Romans doomed the deformed to immediate destruction. The union of the races concerns the welfare of the commonwealth much too nearly to be entrusted to individual arrangement. The fate of a nation will ultimately depend upon the strength and health of the population. Both France and England should look to this; they have cause. As to our mighty engines of war in the hands of a puny race, it will be the old story of the lower empire and the Greek fire. Laws should be passed to secure all this, and some day they will be. But nothing can be done till the Aryan races are extricated from Semitism."-(Vol. 1, p. 280.)

"Descent of Man," vol. 1. p. 174.