f this nature lead to
artificial abortion and encourage promiscuous intercourse. The safety
of families and sexual intercourse lies in the duties of parents
toward their children.

The principal task of a political economy which has the true happiness
of men at heart, should be to encourage the procreation of happy,
useful, healthy and hard-working individuals. To build an
ever-increasing number of hospitals, asylums for lunatics, idiots and
incurables, reformatories, etc.; to provide them with every comfort,
and manage them scientifically, is no doubt a very fine thing, and
speaks well of the progress and development of human sympathy. But,
what is forgotten, is that by concerning ourselves almost exclusively
with human ruins, the results of our social abuses, we gradually
weaken the forces of the healthy portion of the population.

By attacking the roots of the evil and limiting the procreation of the
unfit, we shall be performing a work which is much more humanitarian,
if less striking in its effect.

Formerly, our economists and politicians hardly ever considered this
question, and even now very few are interested in it, because it
brings neither honors nor money, as we do not ourselves see the fruits
of such efforts. Any one who aims at serious reforms and puts his hand
to the work is looked upon as eccentric, or even mad. This is why we
are contented with the kind of humanitarianism which makes a show and
panders to the sentimentality of the masses, by holding out a
charitable hand to the visible and audible evils which make women
weep. In short, we amuse ourselves with repairing the ruins, but are
afraid of attacking what makes these ruins!

=The Laws of Lycurgus.=--There was once in Sparta a great legislator
named Lycurgus, who attempted to introduce a kind of human selection
into the laws. He wished to make the Spartans a strong nation, because
at that time bodily strength was almost the only ideal of the people.
He understood the value of hardness but not that of work. The
importance of selective elimination of the diseased and weak was
apparent to his pre-Darwinian intuition, but in his time natural laws
were not understood. However, in spite of their failings, the laws of
Lycurgus succeeded up to a certain point in making the Spartans a
strong nation.

According to the laws of Lycurgus, the Spartan inherited no property,
and was forbidden all luxury. He had to eat his simple black broth
with his fello