What is eugenics? / by Leonard Darwin.

  • Darwin, Leonard, 1850-1943.
Date:
1928
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

Credit: What is eugenics? / by Leonard Darwin. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    ВШТН CONTROL 35 increase in numbers as would take place in the absence of all these checks. If over-population is permitted in the future, it will inevitably result at first in much unemploy¬ ment, then in increasing poverty and disease, and finally in actual starvation. If this is not sooner or later to be our fate, some means of checking the growth of the population must always be kept actively at work. Moreover, if we consider each family separately, we shall see that it is often highly desirable that it should not be too large. In the first place, the probable effects on the mother's health must be held in consideration. For this reason, and also for the sake of the children, births should at all events never follow each other too rapidly. Lastly, parents ought not to bring more children into the world than they can reasonably hope to bring up in accordance with a certain standard of living; and this standard as regards all higher things should not in any case be below that which they themselves have been accustomed to. The misery, pauperism, and even crime, resulting from over¬ crowded houses could certainly be lessened or obviated by forethought as to the size of the family. In fact, others besides those of bad stock ought often to refrain from parenthood. Thus, whether we are looking to each family considered separately or to the nation taken as a whole, we see that some means of keeping a check on the population will always be necessary. Putting aside all the harmful methods above mentioned, there remain only two alternatives which have to be considered—namely, continence and birth control. It is true that both have been criticized on the ground that they are injurious to health. Neither of them is, however, necessarily injurious. Moreover, even if slightly injurious, this would certainly not be a conclusive argument against either of them. We often have to make a choice between two evils, and the harm done by over-population would far outweigh any minor evils which might attend whatever way was selected of keeping the number of the people within bounds. Details of the methods of birth control