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Page 34
It is the fertility of the unfit that makes the burden of the fit, and a
tax on bachelors, or a bonus on families, would be responded to by the
least fit, long before it affected those whose response was anticipated,
and the problem sought to be solved would only be aggravated thereby.
No encouragement whatever can the State afford to give to the natural
increase of population till it has successfully grappled with the
propagation of defectives.
The burden of life would be lessened by nearly one-third if the
fertility of defectives could be stopped.
The State would have to support only those who acquired defects, the
scars of service more honourable than wealth, in their efforts to
support themselves and families, and these would be few indeed, if
inherited tendencies could be eliminated or reduced to a minimum.
It is the purpose of this work to attempt to describe a method that will
help to bring about this end.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER IX.
THE MULTIPLICATION OF THE UNFIT IN RELATION TO THE STATE.
_Ancient methods of preventing the fertility of the unfit.--Christian
sentiment suppressed inhuman practices--Christian care brings many
defectives to the child-bearing period of life.--The association of
mental and physical defects.--Who are the unfit.--The tendency of
relatives to cast their degenerate kinsfolk on the State.--Our social
conditions manufacture defectives and foster their fertility.--The only
moral force that limits families is inhibition with prudence.--Defective
self-control transmitted hereditarily. Dr. Mac Gregorys cases.--The
transmission of insanity.--Celibacy of the insane is the prophylaxis of
insanity in the race.--The environment of the unfit.--Defectives
snatched from Nature's clutch.--At the age of maturity they are left to
propogate their kind_.
THE humanitarian spirit, born 1900 years ago, effectually
checked all inhuman practices for disposal of the unfit. Christ is the
Author of this spirit. The noisy triumph of His persecutors had scarcely
died away before His conception of the sanctity of human life found
expression in the mission of those Roman maidens who in His name devoted
their lives to collecting exposed infants from the environs of their
city--that they might rear and educate them and bring them to the
Church.
Not only has it done this, but it has taught society that its first and
highest duty is to its weaker brethren, who constitute the unfit. All
our modern institutions are based on this sentiment, and what is the
result? Weaklings are born into the world and the weaker they are the
more carefully are they tended and nursed. The law of the struggle for
existence, _i.e._, the law of Justice is suspended or modified, and the
unfit are allowed to live, or at least allowed to live a little longer,
long enough indeed to propagate their kind.
Hospitals and Homes and Charitable institutions all combine their
energies, and direct their efforts to nurture those whom the laws of
nature decree should die.
Sympathy and not indignation is aroused when a defective is born, and
the result of all the effort which that sympathy evokes is that the
little weakling and thousands such are safely led and tended all the way
to the child-bearing period of life, only to repeat their history, in
others.
Not only do defects "run in families," but they run in groups, and a
physical defect such as club-foot, cleft palate, or any arrested
development, is apt to be associated with some mental defect, and it is
the mental more than the physical defects of individuals that prevent
them being self-supporting helpful members of society.
In the "North American Review" for August, 1903, Sir John Gorst declares
that:--
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