result of
their intellectual development. I have already expressed the opinion
that prudence and social selfishness, operating through sexual
self-restraint on the part of the best citizens of the State, are the
cause of their infertility. It is impossible for the State to correct
this evil, except by lessening the burden the fit man has to bear; and
the elimination of the unfit, by artificial selection, is the surest and
most effective way of bringing this about.

We have learned from the immortal Pasteur the true and scientific method
of artificial selection of the fit, by the elimination of the unfit. We
have already seen that he examined the moth, to find if it were healthy,
and rejected its eggs if it were diseased. Medical knowledge of heredity
and disease makes it possible to conduct analogous examinations of
prospective mothers; and surgery secreted in the ample and luxurious
folds of anaesthesia, and protected by its guardian angels antiseptics,
makes it possible to prevent the fertilization of human ova with a
vicious taint. It is possible to sterilize defective women, and the
wives of defective men by an operation of simple ligature, which
produces absolutely no change whatever in the subjects of it, beyond
rendering this fertilization impossible, for the rest of life. This
remedy for the great and growing evil which confronts us to-day is
suggested, not to avenge but to protect society, and in profound pity
for the classes who are a burden to themselves, as well as to those who
have to tend and support them.

The problem of the unfit is not new. The burden of supporting those
unable to support themselves has been keenly felt in all ages and among
all peoples.

The ancients realized the danger and the burden, but found no difficulty
when the stress became acute in enacting that all infants should be
examined and the defective despatched.

To come nearer home, Boeltius tells us, that, "in old times when a Scot
was affected with any hereditary disease their sons were emasculated,
their daughters banished, and if any female affected with such disease
were pregnant, she was to be burned alive."

Aristotle declared (Politics Book II, p. 40) that "neglect of this
subject is a never failing cause of poverty, and poverty is the parent
of revolution and crime," and he advocated habitual abortion as one
remedy against over-population. The combined wisdom of the Greeks found
no better method of keeping population