--Spread
of physiological knowledge.--All limitation involves self
restraint.--Motives for limitation.--Those who do and those who do not
limit.--Poverty and the Birth-rate. Defectives prolific and propagate
their kind.--Moral restraint held to include all sexual interference
designed to limit families.--Power of self-control an attribute of the
best citizens.--Its absence an attribute of the worst.--Humanitarianism
increases the number and protects the lives of defectives.--The ratio of
the unfit to the fit.--Its dangers to the State.--Antiquity of the
problem.--The teaching of the ancients.--Surgical methods already
advocated._
A century has passed since Malthus made his immortal contribution to the
supreme problem of all ages and all people, but the whole aspect of the
population question has changed since his day. The change, however, was
anticipated by the great economist, and predicted in the words:--"The
history of modern civilisation is largely the history of the gradual
victory of the third check over the two others" (_vide_ Essay, 7th
edition, p. 476). The third check is moral restraint and the two others
vice and misery.
The statistics of all civilized nations show a gradual and progressive
decline in the birth-rate much more marked of recent years.
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