large towns, and in proportion to the antiquity of those towns,
and therefore in proportion to the number of generations during
which the degrading influences have been at work.

This and cognate dangers have been felt more and more deeply, as
the years have rolled on, by students of human society. To ward
them off, theory after theory has been put on paper, especially in
France, which deserve high praise for their ingenuity, less for
their morality, and, I fear, still less for their common sense.
For the theorist in his closet is certain to ignore, as
inconvenient to the construction of his Utopia, certain of those
broad facts of human nature which every active parish priest,
medical man, or poor-law guardian has to face every day of his
life.

Society and British human nature are what they have become by the
indirect influences of long ages, and we can no more reconstruct
the one than we can change the other. We can no more mend men by
theories than we can by coercion--to which, by-the-bye, almost all
these theorists look longingly as their final hope and mainstay.
We must teach men to mend their own matters, of their own reason,
and their own free-will. We must teach them that they are the
arbiters of their own destinies; and, to a fearfully large degree,
of their children's destinies after them. We must teach them not
merely that they ought to be free, but that they are free, whether
they know it or not, for good and for evil. And we must do that
in this case, by teaching them sound practical science; the
science of physiology as applied to health. So, and so only, can
we cheek--I do not say stop entirely--though I believe even that
to be ideally possible; but at least cheek the process of