lume we are concerned with under the name of
Social Hygiene. That movement is far from being an abrupt or
revolutionary manifestation in the ordinary progress of social growth.
As we have seen, social reform during the past eighty years may be said
to have proceeded in four successive stages, each of which has involved
a nearer approach to the sources of life. The fourth stage, which in its
beginnings dates only from the last years of the nineteenth century,
takes us to the period before birth, and is concerned with the care of
the child in the mother's womb. The next stage cannot fail to take us to
the very source of life itself, lifting us beyond the task of purifying
the conditions, and laying on us the further task of regulating the
quantity and raising the quality of life at its very source. The duty of
purifying, ordering, and consolidating the banks of the stream must
still remain.[8] But when we are able to control the stream at its
source we are able to some extent to prevent the contamination of that
stream by filth, and ensure that its muddy floods shall not sweep away
the results of our laborious work on the banks. Our sense of social
responsibility is developing into a sense of racial responsibility, and
that development is expressed in the nature of the tasks of Social
Hygiene which now lie before us.

It is the control of the reproduction of the race which renders possible
the new conception of Social Hygiene. We have seen that the gradual
process of social reform during the first three quarters of the
nineteenth century, by successive stages of movement towards the sources
of life, finally reached the moment of conception. The first result of
reform at this point was that procreation became a deliberate act. Up
till then the method of propagating the race was the same as that which
savages have carried on during thousands of years, the chief difference
being that whereas savages have frequently sought to compensate their
recklessness by destroying their inferior offspring, we had accepted all
the offspring, good, bad, and indifferent, produced by our
indiscriminate recklessness, shielding ourselves by a false theology.
Children "came," and their parents disclaimed all responsibility for
their coming. The children were "sent by God," and if they all turned
out to be idiots, the responsibility was God's. But when it became
generally realized that it was possible to limit offspring without
interfering with