. Such cases are not exceptions; any experienced doctor or
nurse can recount similar stories. In the interest of medical science
this practice may be justified. I am not criticising it from that
point of view. I realize as well as the most conservative moralist that
humanity requires that healthy members of the race should make certain
sacrifices to preserve from death those unfortunates who are born with
hereditary taints. But there is a point at which philanthropy may become
positively dysgenic, when charity is converted into injustice to the
self-supporting citizen, into positive injury to the future of the race.
Such a point, it seems obvious, is reached when the incurably defective
are permitted to procreate and thus increase their numbers.

The problem of the dependent, delinquent and defective elements in
modern society, we must repeat, cannot be minimized because of their
alleged small numerical proportion to the rest of the population. The
proportion seems small only because we accustom ourselves to the habit
of looking upon feeble-mindedness as a separate and distinct calamity to
the race, as a chance phenomenon unrelated to the sexual and biological
customs not only condoned but even encouraged by our so-called
civilization. The actual dangers can only be fully realized when we have
acquired definite information concerning the financial and cultural cost
of these classes to the community, when we become fully cognizant of the
burden of the imbecile upon the whole human race; when we see the funds
that should be available for human development, for scientific, artistic
and philosophic research, being diverted annually, by hundreds of
millions of dollars, to the care and segregation of men, women, and
children who never should have been born. The advocate of Birth Control
realizes as well as all intelligent thinkers the dangers of interfering
with personal liberty. Our whole philosophy is, in fact, based upon
the fundamental assumption that man is a self-conscious, self-governing
creature, that he should not be treated as a domestic animal; that he
must be left free, at least within certain wide limits, to follow his
own wishes in the matter of mating and in the procreation of children.
Nor do we believe that the community could or should send to the
lethal chamber the defective progeny resulting from irresponsible and
unintelligent breeding.

But modern society, which has respected the personal liberty of the