which they are invoking they would deserve to be treated as criminals.

On the practical side a knowledge of the possibility of preventing
conception has, doubtless, never been quite extinct in civilization and
even in lower stages of culture, though it has mostly been utilized for
ends of personal convenience or practiced in obedience to conventional
social rules which demanded chastity, and has only of recent times been
made subservient to the larger interests of society and the elevation of
the race. The theoretical basis of the control of procreation, on its
social and economic, as distinct from its eugenic, aspects, may be said to
date from Malthus's famous _Essay on Population_, first published in 1798,
an epoch-marking book,--though its central thesis is not susceptible of
actual demonstration,--since it not only served as the starting-point of
the modern humanitarian movement for the control of procreation, but also
furnished to Darwin (and independently to Wallace also) the fruitful idea
which was finally developed into the great evolutionary theory of natural
selection.

Malthus, however, was very far from suggesting that the control of
procreation, which he advocated for the benefit of mankind, should be
exercised by the introduction of preventive methods into sexual
intercourse. He believed that civilization involved an increased power of
self-control, which would make it possible to refrain altogether from
sexual intercourse, when such self-restraint was demanded in the interests
of humanity. Later thinkers realized, however, that, while it is
undoubtedly true that civilization involves greater forethought and
greater self-control, we cannot anticipate that those qualities should be
developed to the extent demanded by Malthus, especially when the impulse
to be controlled is of so powerful and explosive a nature.

James Mill was the pioneer in advocating Neo-Malthusian methods, though he
spoke cautiously. In 1818, in the article "Colony" in the supplement to
the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_, after remarking that the means of checking
the unrestricted increase of the population constitutes "the most
important practical problem to which the wisdom of the politician and
moralist can be applied," he continued: "If the superstitions of the
nursery were discarded, and the principle of utility kept steadily in
view, a solution might not be very difficult to be found." Four years
later, James Mill's friend, the Radi