The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1914-04-27
SOCIAL HYGIENE.


 SOCIAL HYGIENE.
 By Bird S. Coler. Former Comptroaler
 City of New York
 We have. arrived at a critical stage in the development of our American every hand that the same malignant influences which have distorted the national progress of every other nation under the sun have gathered together to give battle on this consecrated soil to the magnificent spirit of liberty and sanity which inspires and anirnates our American civil government. From out the foul places of history there come potentialities Of destruction men acing our institutions, much as the mi cro- organisms of deadly epidemic dis eases come to us from the unc1ean cit- ies of the old world
 There IS another point in which these threatening on the one hand our physical health. and on the other hand our moral and politi- cal welfare areanalogous. As the micro-organisrns of disease are so minute as to visible under DOW erfuI microscope only. so the germs that infeet our moral and intellectual life are recognizable and defina.ble only
 
 study. So we have come thus far from the point at which the fathers Of this republic laid down a, principal of government consonant with eternal justice, and at this stage we meet the conditions that are to try our powers of resistance to the utmost. Here we face the sl1ronded future. In facing 3 ft let us look upon it's form with eyes that are unafraid Social health is a state Of mind. or at least 1t is D re- sultant from certain state of mind It is an exceedingly broad term It covers not only those conditions of the human body with which the physi- clan is familiar, but attitudes and ac- tivities of the human mind with which are concerned the statesmen. the priest, the teacher and the philoso- pher. A nation of vigorous athletes without intelIigence, without will |sobedfent to the judgnent which in it's could n6t be said to be in a state of social health. Indeed, my illus tration is impossible for the nature of man is such that there could be no such race of magnificent animals The lack of the spiritual and intelIectual qualities would itself react on the phy- sical constitution and depravIty and iofogica1 organism and give us a race physically dwarfed as well as morally stunted,
 POLLUTED THOUGHT CAUSE
 You will pardon me therefore if in E discussing before you, many of whom are physicians. this subject of social hygiene. stress less the body than the mind, and deal less with physlol :osy than with philosophy, for think the source Of social evil is the polluted thought and the radical cure goes be- hind the infected flesh to the corrupt ed 3conscience The school of thera- peutics that would make safe the in4 diligence of evil passions is a school of pseudo therapeutics It is fore opinion-tlle opinion Of d layman he main duty and the most valuable war k Isof doctors of medicine, will still sbs to heal the broken-down body To a very considerable extent they may lessen the sum of human misery by pointing out sanitary dangers to be avoided but without another infiu ence they will fail to accomplish any con siderable or enduring good Rreventa- tive medicine in the last analysis rnu st rest not with the physician but with the priest. The hyg1enesof race is depsndent ultimately upon it's mora duality. The health Of people is proportionate to the height of it's L. Let us then consider what 1t is that threatens 4our future. Is it mainly a material danger, or is the material expression of moral danger? think it is the latter | think that all the sanitary conditions against which we must guard, receive their power to do evil from certain currents Of thought flowing in upon our in- 1 tellectual life. What are the sources of these currents? Were they pois- onous streams from the beginning, or did they gush forth originally in 8 state of health only to be polluted | during their progress T think that originally these streams came from 3 healthy sourceI think that they were in the beginning an oitf1owing of the spirit of inquiry, without which there I would be no progress of the human l race. This spirit has reached out in saa directions. It was infected,I be I 1ieve, by rnaterialism which undol1bt- I edly followed upon and fattened upon ! the discoveries of Charles Darwin. am not questioning here the value of Darwinfs work as a biologist. Be- yond doubt he made some advancE l in the direction Of the discovery o1 the operation of natural forces in bi- ology But the great evil that was done was the outcome of the popular conception Of the meaning of his dis I covery. Materfalfsm and revolution I ary philosophy foisted upon the worle an altogether false and vicious ides l of the meaning of Darwin's work The I intellectual negative, the hatred of au- thority, sought to convince the world I that science had demonstrated the fal l sly of the religious idea The re suit of this was the loosening of ths k bonds of moral obligation. Mere material manifestations, thinking ana feeling and will only as the result oi I mechanical processes. cannot have tbfnding moral conceptions Theil l morality must be a thing of conven Hence and inclination. If ethical pre-, cepts run against their advantage 0: | desire ethical precepts must fall i there is no authority behind them. DOGMATTsM GROWS.
 We have felt this in the activitie.