On the practical side a knowledge of the possibility of preventing conception has, doubtless, never been quite extinct in civilization and even in lower stages of culture, though it has mostly been utilized for ends of personal convenience or practiced in obedience to conventional social rules which demanded chastity, and has only of recent times been made subservient to the larger interests of society and the elevation of the race.  The theoretical basis of the control of procreation, on its social and economic, as distinct from its eugenic, aspects, may be said to date from Malthus’s famous Essay on Population, first published in 1798, an epoch-marking book,—­though its central thesis is not susceptible of actual demonstration,—­since it not only served as the starting-point of the modern humanitarian movement for the control of procreation, but also furnished to Darwin (and independently to Wallace also) the fruitful idea which was finally developed into the great evolutionary theory of natural selection.

Malthus, however, was very far from suggesting that the control of procreation, which he advocated for the benefit of mankind, should be exercised by the introduction of preventive methods into sexual intercourse.  He believed that civilization involved an increased power of self-control, which would make it possible to refrain altogether from sexual intercourse, when such self-restraint was demanded in the interests of humanity.  Later thinkers realized, however, that, while it is undoubtedly true that civilization involves greater forethought and greater self-control, we cannot anticipate that those qualities should be developed to the extent demanded by Malthus, especially when the impulse to be controlled is of so powerful and explosive a nature.

James Mill was the pioneer in advocating Neo-Malthusian methods, though he spoke cautiously.  In 1818, in the article “Colony” in the supplement to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, after remarking that the means of checking the unrestricted increase of the population constitutes “the most important practical problem to which the wisdom of the politician and moralist can be applied,” he continued:  “If the superstitions of the nursery were discarded, and the principle of utility kept steadily in view, a solution might not be very difficult to be found.”  Four years later, James Mill’s friend, the Radical reformer, Francis Place, more distinctly expressed the thought that was evidently in Mill’s mind.  After enumerating the facts concerning the necessity of self-control in procreation and the evils of early marriage, which he thinks ought to be clearly taught, Place continues:  “If a hundredth, perhaps a thousandth part of the pains were taken to teach these truths, that are taken to teach dogmas, a great change for the better might, in no considerable space of time, be expected to take place in the appearance and the habits of the people.  If, above all, it were once clearly understood that it was not disreputable