29O AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [n. s.. i, 1899
order to elevate the condition of the industrial laborers, let attention be given also to those laws of workingmen's insur- ance and to those various reforms " which are the imperish- able glory of the never-to-be-forgotten Emperor William I and of his great Chancellor." It is true that these reforms are partial violations of Darwinian selection, inasmuch as they give rise to the survival of weaker and less gifted individuals; it is also true that the advantage which the laborers derive from said reforms is often rather problematic, since employers, in order not to incur the new charges, often close their shops and turn the laborers into the street. Yet nobody can advocate that the lower classes be decimated by misfortune and disease, since a just social sentiment rebels against such attempted extermination.
Hence, the author concludes, we should applaud social reform ; but this reform must come from above as a gracious concession by the capitalists, men superior to the brutalized populace, not be extorted by the latter as the result of a reversed battle. Above all, let the working people, so long as found requisite, be tutored, bene- fited, even fed (not, however, too sumptuously, since over-abun- dance multiplies crimes against the person) ; but at the same time let them be kept in the inferior position befitting their intellectual inferiority. The working class should be inspired with sentiments of modesty and of reverence for the upper classes ; it should be taught to abandon the baleful aspirations of invading democracy, which, admitting the lowest elements of the population to power, is directly at variance with the dogmas of social anthropology.
Such are the ideas which the author lays before the astonished sociologists of his time. They are not new, since in substance they amount to a sociologic application of those doctrines of Nietzsche which found their proper criticism, and a peremptory one, in the incurable paranoia with which their originator was afflicted. But several observations are peculiar to Ammon, or rather several rather grave errors, which must not be passed without notice.
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