the birth rate in Great Britain were now to become the same as it was fifty years ago, without any corresponding change taking place in the death rate, the annual increase of the population, instead of being, as it was recently, onethird of a million, would be somewhere about a million. As the recent fall in the birth rate has at all events been largely due to conception control, here we get some indication of what its entire abandonment would mean. It must be remembered that there are good reasons for believing that not only has the recent increase in numbers been absorbed with difficulty, but that the average economic condition of the people would be better than it now is if the birth rate had fallen even more rapidly than it has done; whilst, if we look to individual cases, no one can fail to realize the vast amount of misery caused by the appearance of large families in poor households. As to the future, it is impossible that the population of the whole world can go on increasing at the present rate indefinitely, and a more powerful brake must be applied sooner or later. Abstinence cannot be relied on as cure for these evils, and the choice will practically lie between. a more extended use of conception control and an increase. in the number of deaths directly or indirectly due to want. On all these grounds, and because it is wicked to bring children into the world under such conditions that they cannot become efficient citizens, is it not at any rate undeniable that conception control is to be preferred on moral grounds to indulgence without precautions ?

By facilitating family limitation, conception control does, moreover, tend actually to promote morality in several ways. In the first place, a large family makes for poverty, and want certainly promotes crime in many ways. Early marriages would be more readily contracted if large families were less frequent and therefore less feared; and early marriages greatly lessen the temptation to promiscuous intercourse. Infidelity in married life would become less common if conception control were generally to be regarded as a morally justifiable proceeding; for adultery may be promoted by the wife regarding all such proceedings as being immoral, whilst the husband,

6

PARENTAL RESPONSIBILITY

183

not sharing these views, lives under a sense of grievance which makes rebellion against family ties more probable. Then, again, in the past the size of the family was regarded as a thing beyond human control, the whole blame being laid on nature' when it was too large; and anything which tends to hasten the abolition of this fatalistic view of parenthood will increase the sense of individual responsibility amongst parents. Those parents who admit that no child need have appeared will be led on to feel that all that their children have to suffer is in a sense attributable to themselves, and such thoughts will make them more anxious to relieve that suffering. Lastly, the physical union of the sexes helps to maintain the affection between husband and wife, and abstinence may actually increase those discords which are so harmful to the well-being of the whole family. Taking all these considerations into account, it appears to me that conception control is not to be condemned on moral grounds if utilized on proper

occasions.

GENERAL CONCLUSIONS

For various reasons a sentiment of opposition is likely to be aroused against all methods of preventing parenthood, and it is necessary to be on our guard against unreasonable objections. We all resent, and rightly resent, any interference with our liberty to do what we hold to be right, and a desire to safeguard ourselves may lead us to offer an unwarrantable opposition to any curtailment of the liberty of others, even if justifiable. Where sex is concerned, such feelings are probably often in large measure purely instinctive; for natural selection must in the past always have favoured those instincts which tended to promote the perpetuation of the race. Though our natural impulses on the whole guide us rightly, they must not be blindly followed; the natural pugnacity of man, for example, being an illegitimate excuse for war. Unreasonable opposition is sure to be raised against all methods of eliminating inferior types through the agency of the birth rate, and being largely instinctive, this opposi

tion will only be slowly overcome by reasonable arguments. Certain methods of eliminating inferior types, including the lethal chamber and imprisonment, are of course to be unhesitatingly condemned, and all methods must be used with great circumspection. Large numbers might be segregated with advantage to the race; but a proper regard for the sentiments of those thus placed under restraint will rightly impose rigid limitations on this method of securing racial benefits. As compared with segregation, sterilization necessitates far less interference with liberty, and from that point of view is less open to objection; though until popular prejudices have been more overcome, its use should be restricted to cases when consent has been obtained, guardians being empowered to give consent in the case of the feeble-in-mind. Both sterilization and conception control can be promoted by pressure in ways to be discussed in subsequent chapters; but when sterilization has once been performed, there may be no going back on the consent given; whilst with conception control the action taken will always maintain its voluntary character. In order effectively to promote family limitation by means of conception control, any pressure applied must, therefore, be continuous in its action; and as it can only act by affecting the reason or the moral sense, there need be no accompanying sense of degradation. In short, the more drastic the method of preventing parenthood, the smaller will be the possible field of its operations; and segregation and sterilization could never prevent as many births as might be prevented by conception control. In the last chapter it was seen that we are apt to exaggerate the racial injury to posterity due to the presence of a small number of the most degraded types as compared with that due to large numbers of the less degraded; and it follows that conception control, on account of its wide possibilities, is likely to be the most powerful agency which exists for racial improvement or racial deterioration, as the case may be. We are, however, at present only concerned with the way in which comparatively small numbers of persons, each individually selected on account of some harmful quality, should be dealt with so as to secure racial benefits ;

BENEFITS OTHER THAN HEREDITARY

185

and for this reason the question whether conception control can be made a useful agency in eugenic reform will be postponed until the methods of mass selection have been considered. All that has thus far been decided is that it

is not necessarily immoral.

We shall now pass on to consider various inferior types which should if possible by some of the foregoing methods be eliminated from the race in order to prevent their harmful qualities from flowing on like a stream for ever. This volume is mainly concerned with questions connected with natural inheritance; but it may not be out of place here to point out how strangely oblivious to certain environmental influences are those who rely on the improvement of human surroundings as the main factor in human progress. Persons endowed with serious mental or bodily defects as a rule do not or cannot maintain themselves in surroundings as good as they would have created for themselves if they had been wise and healthy; and this is true whether their harmful qualities are hereditary or acquired. The children brought up in these inferior environments will suffer some damage in consequence; and they will moreover pass on their inferiority by tradition in some measure to posterity as an enduring harmful legacy. Even if no thought be given to natural inheritance, would it not, therefore, be better for the nation of the future if as a general rule persons selected on account of marked defects of any kind were to leave few or no descendants behind them? By preventing harmful environmental inheritance, eugenic reforms are likely to produce social benefits to which all reformers are now nearly blind.

CHAPTER XII

FEEBLEMINDEDNESS

MENTAL DEFECT

In regard to the undesirable types marked out by various legal processes, the feeble-in-mind are the most important from the eugenic point of view, both on account of their numbers and because of the unquestionably hereditary character of their ailment. In this country this process of legal selection is now regulated by the Mental Deficiency Act of 1913, the classes of persons coming under its provisions being defined as follows:

(a) Idiots, or persons so deeply defective in mind as to be unable to guard themselves against common physical dangers.

(b) Imbeciles, or persons in whose case there exists mental defectiveness not amounting to idiocy, yet so pronounced that they are incapable of managing themselves or their affairs, or, in the case of children, of being taught to do so.

(c) Feeble-minded persons, or persons in whose case there exists mental defectiveness not amounting to imbecility, yet so pronounced that they require care, supervision and control for their own protection or for the protection of others, or in the case of children that by reason of such defectiveness appear to be permanently incapable of receiving proper benefit from the instruction in ordinary schools.

(d) Moral imbeciles, or persons who display some permanent mental defect coupled with strong vicious or criminal propensities on whom punishment has little or no deterrent effect.

According to the definition in the Act, the defect must