CONCLUSION.
In conclusion let us briefly review the whole position taken up in this imperfect study of a great question.
1. The birth-rate is rapidly and persistently declining.
2. The food-rate is persistently increasing.
3. The declining fertility is not uniform through all classes.
4. The fertility of the best is rapidly declining.
5. The fertility of the worst is undisturbed.
6. The policy of the State is inimical to the fertility of its best, and fosters the fertility of its worst citizens.
7. The infertility of the best stock is due to voluntary curtailment of the family, through sexual self-restraint.
8. No such-factor does or can obtain as a check to the fertility of the unfit.
9. The proportion of the unfit to the fit is in consequence annually increasing.
10. The future of society demands that compulsory sterilization of the unfit should be adopted.
11. No method ever tried or suggested offers the advantages of simplicity, safety, effectiveness, and popularity, promised by tubo-ligature.
12. The State must protect itself against the collateral danger of artificial sterilization of its best stock.
The highest interest of Society and of the individual urgently requires that the size of families be controlled.
The moral restraint of Malthus (delayed marriage) and post-nuptial intermittent restraint are the only safe and rational methods, that our civilization can possibly encourage, or physiology endorse.
These methods must of necessity be peculiar to the best class of people. For the worst class of people, induced sterility, or prohibited fertility, is an absolute necessity, if Society and civilization must endure.
Now what are likely to be the results of, first, the moral methods, and, second, the surgical method of our curtailment.
"It does not appear to me," says Dr. Billings (Forum, June, 1893), "that this lessening of the birth-rate is in itself an evil, or that it will be worth while to attempt to increase the birth-rate merely for the sake of maintaining a constant increase in the population, because to neither this nor the next generation will such increase be specially beneficial."
To Aristotle, the great advantage of an abundant population was, that the State was secured against invasion by numerous defenders.
If we can find no stronger justification for a teeming population than this to-day, we will be forced to agree with Dr. Billings, that neither to this nor the next generation, is a great increase especially beneficial.
But the moral effect of judicial limitation is very great. If men and women can marry young, one great incentive to vice is removed. If married people can bear their children when they can best support them, they will marry when their bodies are matured, and bear their families when their finances are matured.
For children well provided for, and educated, and born after full physical and mental maturity in their parents, turn out the best men and women.
If the conditions of life are made easy, if ease and comfort are tolerably secured to all, if the strain and stress of life are reduced, if hardship, poverty, and want are reduced to a minimum, the sexual instinct and parental love in human nature, so far unimpaired by any known force, are powerful enough to keep the race alive, and insure a progressive development.
The greater the proportion and the fertility of the defective, the less hope for the future. If the fertility of the unfit be reduced to a minimum, not only will many dreadful hereditary diseases be eradicated, but the fertility of the fit will receive a powerful stimulus, because of the great diminution there will necessarily be in the burdens they will have to bear.
The advantages of sterility to the unfit themselves will, on the whole, be incalculable. They are self-evident, and need not be dwelt on here.
The whole sum of human happiness would in this way be most assuredly increased, and the aim and object of all social reform be to some extent at least, realized.
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