sufficiently severe to have an excellent deterrent effect on any who may feel disposed to commit a felony.
I inquired if there were not many cases of children received at the establishments who were incapable of a subaqueous life, or who, from some inborn defect of constitution or congenital deformity, are incapable of turning out useful members of society. I was informed that such cases did undoubtedly occur, but as infants so afflicted were not worth the trouble of rearing, they were not reared.
"What!" I exclaimed, "do the laws of Colymbia sanction infanticide?"
"Well," replied the resident director of one of these institutions, to whom my question was directed, "if you like to call it so, they do. But in this, as in other respects, the laws are formed on what you would undoubtedly call cold-blooded philosophical principles. They are drawn up and enacted with the sole view of the good of the community. Now it is not good for the community to be burdened with the charge of crippled, blind or deaf members. Every baby is carefully examined on entrance by a committee of learned anatomists and physiologists, and if they find it affected with any malformation, or deformity, or disease, which renders it likely that the child will not be 'viable'—i.e., capable of making its way in life—it is not reared, and thus society is spared a useless member, and a human being spared a wretched life."
"But," I replied, "we find from experience that cripples, blind and deaf people are often extremely useful members of society, and are by no means universally wretched."
"It may be so," he returned with calm indifference, but at all events the integrity of society is impaired
