to produce a new kind of man, with a new arrangement of eyes or limbs.
The hospital, by necessity, may send a man home with one leg less:
but it will not (in a creative rapture) send him home with one leg extra.
Medical science is content with the normal human body, and only seeks
to restore it.

But social science is by no means always content with the normal
human soul; it has all sorts of fancy souls for sale. Man as a
social idealist will say "I am tired of being a Puritan; I want
to be a Pagan," or "Beyond this dark probation of Individualism I
see the shining paradise of Collectivism." Now in bodily ills
there is none of this difference about the ultimate ideal.
The patient may or may not want quinine; but he certainly
wants health No one says "I am tired of this headache;
I want some toothache," or "The only thing for this Russian
influenza is a few German measles," or "Through this dark
probation of catarrh I see the shining paradise of rheumatism."
But exactly the whole difficulty in our public problems
is that some men are aiming at cures which other men would
regard as worse maladies; are offering ultimate conditions
as states of health which others would uncompromisingly
call states of disease. Mr. Belloc once said that he would
no more part with the idea of property than with his teeth;
yet to Mr. Bernard Shaw property is not a tooth, but a toothache.
Lord Milner has sincerely attempted to introduce German efficiency;
and many of us would as soon welcome German measles.
Dr. Saleeby would honestly like to have Eugenics; but I would
rather have rheumatics.

This is the arresting and dominant fact about modern