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.  Weinhold seriously proposed the annual mutilation of a certain portion of the children of the popular classes.  Mr. Henry M. Boies, the most enlightened analyst of the problem of the unfit, in his exhaustive work “Prisoners and Paupers,” urges the necessity of effectively controlling the fecundity of the degenerate classes, and he points to surgery, and life-long incarceration as the solution of the problem.  Dr. McKim, in an exhaustive work on “Heredity and Human Progress,” after declaring that he is profoundly convinced of the inefficiency of the measures which we bring to bear against the weakness and depravity of our race, ventures to plead for the remedy which alone, as he believes, can hold back the advancing tide of disintegration.  He states his remedy thus:—­“The roll then, of those whom our plan would eliminate, consists of the following classes of individuals coming under the absolute control of the State:—­idiots, imbeciles, epileptics, habitual drunkards and insane criminals, the larger number of murderers, nocturnal house-breakers, such criminals whatever their offence as might through their constitutional organization appear very dangerous, and finally, criminals who might be adjudged incorrigible.  Each individual of these classes would undergo thorough examination, and only by due process of law would his life be taken from him.  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.”