died soon after birth
through lack of proper care and medical attention, the insane were dealt
with so violently that if they were not killed by the treatment they
were at least left hopelessly "incurable" and had little chance of
becoming parents. Harsh measures, all of these, but they kept the
germ-plasm of the race reasonably purified.

To-day, how is it? The inefficients, the wastrels, the physical, mental,
and moral cripples are carefully preserved at public expense. The
criminal is turned out on parole after a few years, to become the father
of a family. The insane is discharged as "cured," again to take up the
duties of citizenship. The feeble-minded child is painfully "educated,"
often at the expense of his normal brother or sister. In short, the
undesirables of the race, with whom the bloody hand of natural selection
would have made short work early in life, are now nursed along to old
age.

Of course, one would not have it otherwise with respect to the
prolongation of life. To expose deformed children as the Spartans did
would outrage our moral sentiments; to chloroform the incurable is a
proposition that almost every one condemns.

But this philanthropic spirit, this zealous regard for the interests of
the unfortunate, which is rightly considered one of the highest
manifestations of Christian civilization, has in many cases benefited
the few at the expense of the many. The present generation, in making
its own life comfortable, is leaving a staggering bill to be paid by
posterity.

It is at this point that eugenics comes in and demands that a
distinction be made between the interests of the individual and the
interests of the race. It does not yield to any one in its solicitude
for the individual unfortunate; but it says, "His happiness in life does
not need to include leaving a family of children, inheritors of his
defects, who if they were able to think might curse him for begetting
them and curse society for allowing them to be born." And looking at the
other side of the problem, eugenics says to the young man and young
woman, "You should enjoy the greatest happiness that love can bring to
a life. But something more is expected of you than a selfish,
short-sighted indifference to all except yourselves in the world. When
you understand the relation of the individual to the race, you will find
your greatest happiness only in a marriage which will result in a family
of worthy children. You are temporari