It is natural that among every fine race eugenics should be almost an instinct or they would cease to be a fine race.

It is equally natural that among our modern degenerates eugenics is an unspeakable horror, however much, as the psycho-analysts would put it, they rationalise that horror.
The way out of this clash of ideals--which has compelled us to hope impossibilities from the environment because we dreaded what seemed the only alternative--is, as we know, furnished by birth-control.

An unqualified reliance on the environment, making it ever easier and easier for the feeblest and most defective to be born and survive, could only, in the long run, lead to the degeneration of the whole race.

The knowledge of the practice of birth-control gives us the mastery of all that the ancients gained by infanticide, while yet enabling us to cherish that ideal of the sacredness of human life which we profess to honour so highly.

The main difficulty is that it demands a degree of scientific precision which the ancients could not possess and might dispense with, so long as they were able to decide the eugenic claims of the infant by actual inspection.