Page:Contraception; 1st ed. (IA in.ernet.dli.2015.94163).pdf/17

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

In highly civilized countries such as England our altruism carries our sympathies to the most helpless, and while the fit have to shift for themselves the most degenerate have every consideration extended to them at the expense of the more worthy citizens. Nature's method of adapting the individual to the environment which is the surest line of progress is reversed, and we adapt "the environment to the individual, temper the wind to the shorn lamb. No. one is responsible for his appearance on this earth, and, however undesirable his appearance may be, we may and perhaps should allow our altruistic feelings to minister to his comfort and survival, but we have no moral right to allow him to perpetuate his kind, and thus saddle the next generation with the maintenance of a race of degenerates; at present the lower fourth—including the submerged tenth— of the population is producing more than half of the next generation. At this rate of decadence it will soon happen, if it has not already occurred, that one-fifth of the population will be supporting the other four-fifths. While the virility of the nation was carrying on the war the derelicts were carrying on the race. Our sentimentalists and would-be philanthropists at other

xv.