The painless extinction of these lives would present no practical difficulty--in carbonic acid gas we have an agent which would instantaneously fulfil the need." These briefly are some of the remedies which have been advocated and in part applied for the protection of the race from degeneracy.

I quote them, not with approval, but merely to show how grave and serious the social outlook is, in the minds of some of the best thinkers and truest philanthropists that have taught mankind.

If the fertility of the fit could be kept uniformly at its normal rate in a state of nature, the race would have little to fear, for the tendency to further degeneration and consequent extinction amongst the defective would be sufficient to counteract their disposition to a high fertility.

But in all civilized nations, the fertility of the fit is rapidly departing from that normal rate, and Mr.Herbert Spencer declares, with the gloomiest pessimism, that the infertility of the best citizens is the physiological 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.