"Don't mistake me, dear Helen," he said. "I would neither starve nor
drown them after they had reached the faculty of resenting such
treatment--of the justice of which," he added, smiling, "I am afraid
it would be hard to convince them. But such people actually marry
--I have known cases,--and that ought to be provided against by
suitable enactments and penalties."
"And so," rejoined Helen, "because they are unhappy already, you
would heap unhappiness upon them?"
"Now, Helen, you must not be unfair to me any more than to your
hunchbacks. It is the good of the many I seek, and surely that is
better than the good of the few."
"What I object to is, that it should be at the expense of the
few--who are least able to bear it."
"The expense is trifling," said Bascombe. "Grant that it would be
better for society that no such--or rather put it this way: grant
that it would be well for each individual that goes to make up
society that he were neither deformed, sickly, nor idiotic, and you
mean the same that I do. A given space of territory under given
conditions will always maintain a certain number of human beings;
therefore such a law as I propose would not mean that the number
drawing the breath of heaven should, to take the instance before us
in illustration, be two less, but that a certain two of them should
not be such as he or she who passed now, creatures whose existence
is a burden to them, but such as you and I, Helen, who may say
without presumption that we are no disgrace to Nature's handicraft.
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