This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1885 edition. Excerpt: ... chapter xxiv. scientific meliorism. "Meliorism implies the improvement of the social condition through cold calculation, through the adoption of indirect means. It is not content merely to alleviate present suffering, it aims to create conditions under which no suffering can exist."--Lester F. Ward. "Man has already furthered evolution very considerably, half unconsciously, and for his own personal advantages, but he has not yet risen to the conviction that it is his religious duty to do so deliberately and systematically."--Francis Galton. General happiness cannot co-exist with the evils of our present social state. These evils are poverty, a lifelong struggle for existence, the birth and survival of individuals weak and unfit, disease, premature death, enforced celibacy, late marriage, drunkenness, disorganization of family life, severity and harshness in training children, widespread prostitution, war, competition causing survival of militant instincts, social injustice, inequality of comforts and luxuries, tyranny, crime, barbarous treatment of criminals, disrespect of natural function and consequent injury to health, conventional folly, social repression of innocent enjoyment, subjection of women, legal restraint of exuberant life, social and religious bigotry, the feebleness of religious guidance and confusion of religious thought. Partial views of man and his social life have hitherto prevailed and given birth to specifics of all kinds for the cure of the diseases of society; and these, in the growing tenderness of Humanity, have been eagerly adopted and promptly applied, to prove, not only fruitless of good effect, but in many cases fruitful of bad and disastrous effects. Scientific Meliorism deals with society as a whole and...