be avoided; since the
lives of men and women of the poorer classes, and of the worst paid
professional classes, are one long, heart-breaking struggle "to make
both ends meet and keep respectable"; since in the middle class
marriage is often avoided, or delayed till late in life, from the
dread of the large family, and late marriage is followed by its
shadow, the prevalence of vice and the moral and social ruin of
thousands of women; for these, and many other reasons, the teaching of
the duty of limiting the family within the means of subsistence is the
logical outcome of Materialism linked with the scientific view of
evolution, and with a knowledge of the physical law, by which
evolution is accelerated or retarded. Seeking to improve the physical
type, scientific Materialism, it seemed to me, must forbid parentage
to any but healthy married couples; it must restrict childbearing
within the limits consistent with the thorough health and physical
well-being of the mother; it must impose it as a duty never to bring
children into the world unless the conditions for their fair nurture
and development are present. Regarding it as hopeless, as well as
mischievous, to preach asceticism, and looking on the conjunction of
nominal celibacy with widespread prostitution as inevitable, from the
constitution of human nature, scientific Materialism--quite rationally
and logically--advises deliberate restriction of the production of
offspring, while sanctioning the exercise of the sexual instinct
within the limits imposed by temperance, the highest physical and
mental efficiency, the good order and dignity of society, and the
self-respect of the individual.

In all this there is nothing which for one moment implies approval of
licentiousness, profligacy, unbridled self-indulgence. On the
contrary, it is a well-considered and intellectually-defensible scheme
of human evolution, regarding all natural instincts as matters for
regulation, not for destruction, and seeking to develop the perfectly
healthy and well-balanced physical body as the necessary basis for the
healthy and well-balanced mind. If the premises of Materialism be
true, there is no answer to the Neo-Malthusian conclusions; for even
those Socialists who have bitterly opposed the promulgation of
Neo-Malthusianism--regarding it as a "red herring intended to draw the
attention of the proletariat away from the real cause of poverty, the
monopoly of land and capital by a class"-