" (Politics II, 7-5.) And he further
declares (ib. VII. 16 25) "As to the exposure and rearing of children,
let there be a law that no deformed child shall live"; and the exposure
of infants was for years the Grecian method of eliminating the unfit.
A century ago "Parson Malthus" dealt with over-population without regard
to the fitness of individuals to survive, and he advised the exercise
of moral restraint expressed in delayed marriage, to prevent population
pressing on the limits of food, which he maintained it invariably tends
to do. After the high souled Malthus, came the Neo-Malthusians, who,
although they retained the name perverted the teaching of this great
demographist, and some Socialist writers of high repute still advocate
the systematic instruction of the poor in Neo-Malthusian practices.
The rising tide of firm conviction in the minds of present day
sociologists, that the fertility of the unfit is menacing the stability
of the whole social superstructure, is forcing many to advocate more
drastic measures for the salvation of the race. Weinhold seriously
proposed the annual mutilation of a certain portion of the children of
the popular classes. Mr. Henry M. Boies, the most enlightened analyst of
the problem of the unfit, in his exhaustive work "Prisoners and
Paupers," urges the necessity of effectively controlling the fecundity
of the degenerate classes, and he points to surgery, and life-long
incarceration as the solution of the problem.
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