CHAPTER X.
WHAT ANAESTHETICS AND ANTISEPTICS HAVE MADE POSSIBLE.
_Education of defectives in prudence and self-restraint of little avail .-- Surgical suggestions discussed._ For the intelligent mind, which I assume has already been impressed with the importance of such an inquiry, I think I have set forth the salient truths with sufficient clearness, but holding that a recitation of social faults, without a suggestion as to social reforms, is not only useless but mischievous, I shall endeavour to show not only that the situation is not hopeless, but that science and experience have, or will reveal means to the accomplishment of all rationally desired ends, and that it remains only for intelligence to enquire that sentiment may move up to the line so as to harmonise with science, with justice, and with the demands of a growing necessity.
These questions of population are not new.

More than two thousand years ago, many of the wisest philosophers of all the centuries meditated deeply upon the tendencies of the population to crowd upon subsistence, and in many ages and many countries, the situation has been discussed with serious forebodings for the future.
In all ages thinking men have regarded war with aversion, yet with peace and domestic prosperity other dangers arose to threaten the progress of the race, and as the passing generations cried out for some remedy for the ever pressing evils, thinking men have been proposing measures somewhat harmonising with the knowledge or the sentiment of the times.
Whether we are wiser than our ancestors remains an unsettled question.
The old Greeks faced the problem boldly.

There were two dangers in the minds of these ancient philosophers.

There was the danger of over-population of good citizens, and there was the danger of increasing the burden good citizens had to bear by the maintenance of defectives.
However good the breed, over-population was an economic danger, for, said Aristotle, "The legislator who fixes the amount of property should also fix the number of children, for if the children are too many for the property the law must be broken." (Politics II, 7-5.) And he further declares (ib.VII.16 25) "As to the exposure and rearing of children, let there be a law that no deformed child shall live"; and the exposure of infants was for years the Grecian method of eliminating the unfit.
A century ago "Parson Malthus" dealt with over-population without regard to the fitness of individuals to survive, and he advised the exercise of moral restraint expressed in delayed marriage, to prevent population pressing on the limits of food, which he maintained it invariably tends to do.

After the high souled Malthus, came the Neo-Malthusians, who, although they retained the name perverted the teaching of this great demographist, and some Socialist writers of high repute still advocate the systematic instruction of the poor in Neo-Malthusian practices.
The rising tide of firm conviction in the minds of present day sociologists, that the fertility of the unfit is menacing the stability of the whole social superstructure, is forcing many to advocate more drastic measures for the salvation of the race.