The higher checks to population, as they exist among the better classes
of people, do not obtain amongst the defectives taken as a class.
Vice and misery are more active checks amongst the very poor, and
abortion is practised to a very considerable extent, but the appalling
fact remains, that the birth-rate of the unfit goes on undisturbed,
while the introduction of higher checks amongst the normal classes has
led to a marked decline, more marked than at first sight appears. The
worst feature of the problem, however, is not so much the disproportion
in the numbers born to the normal and the abnormal respectively, but the
fact that the defectives propagate their kind.
The defectives, whose existence and whose liberty constitute the
greatest danger to the State, are the intermittent inhabitants of our
lunatic asylums, prisons, and reformatories.
There is one defect common to all these, and that is defective
inhibition.
All human activity is the result of two forces, motor impulses tending
to action, and inhibition tending to inertia.
The lower animals have strong motor impulses constantly exploding and
expressing themselves in great activity, offensive, defensive,
self-preservative, and procreative, being restrained only by the
inhibitive forces of their conditions and environment.
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