In the present age suggestions on this subject may seem superfluous. The more highly educated and wealthy classes have already sufficiently reduced the number of children which they bring into the world. But are these offspring any better than they would have been had their parents given birth to a larger number?

Mr. Darwin did not think much could be done to improve the race by parents limiting the number of their offspring. He would trust to natural selection to weed out the unfit, and to sexual selection as an aid. He thus describes the probable manner of action of sexual selection among primeval men: "The strongest and most vigorous men—those who could best defend and hunt for their families; those who were provided with the best weapons and possessed the most property, such as a large number of dogs or other animals—would succeed in rearing a greater average number of offspring than the weaker and poorer members of the same tribes. Such men would doubtless generally be able to select the more attractive women.... If, then, this be admitted, it would be an unexplainable circumstance if the selection of the more attractive women by the more powerful men of the tribes, who would rear on the average a greater number of children, did not, after the lapse of generations, modify the character of the tribes."

The way in which the tribe would be modified would be by its producing better children. Of course among primitive men the richer and more powerful had several wives, but it is not likely that the number of children by each one was large.

Natural selection is, however, a painful process, necessary, no doubt, where ignorance prevails; but if the number of children of each pair could be limited and of a superior character, so far as vigor and adaptation to environment are concerned, would there not be less need for natural selection with all its evils? It seems to us that this would be so.

We have already quoted Grant Allen as favoring abstinence from parenthood on the part of the unfit and the duty on the part of the fit to become parents, and, theoretically, Mr. Allen is right; but except as both of these classes are swayed by duty we would make little progress in this way. A majority of mankind think they are the fit. Why should they crucify their desires for the benefit of the race? As mankind becomes more moral Mr. Allen's views may have a larger influence on thought than now; but before that time little can be expected from them.

Mr. Spencer says: "We have fallen upon evil times, in which it has come to be an accepted doctrine that part of the responsibilities [of parenthood] are to be discharged, not by parents, but by the public—a part which is gradually becoming a larger part, and threatens to become the whole. Agitators and legislators have united in spreading a theory which, logically followed out, ends in the monstrous conclusion that it is for parents to beget children and for society to take care of them. The political ethics now in fashion makes the unhesitating assumption that while each man, as parent, is not responsible for the mental culture of his offspring he is, as a citizen along with other citizens, responsible for the mental culture of all other men's offspring! And this absurd doctrine has now become so well established that people raise their eyes in astonishment if you deny. But this ignoring of the truth, that only by due discharge of parental responsibilities has all life on the earth arisen, and that only through the better discharge of them have there gradually been made possible better types of life, is, in the long run, fatal. Breach of natural law will, in this case, as in all cases, be followed in due time by nature's revenge—a revenge which will be terrible in proportion as the breach has been great. A system under which parental duties are performed wholesale by those who are not parents, under the plea that many parents cannot or will not perform their duties—a system which fosters the inferior children of inferior parents at the cost of superior parents and consequent injury of superior children—a system which thus helps incapables to multiply and hinders the multiplication of capables or diminishes their capability must bring decay and ultimate extinction. A society which persists in such a system must—other things equal—go to the wall in the competition with a society which does not commit this folly of nourishing its worst at the expense of its best."

We have evidence among primitive people that they understand the necessity of limiting offspring, and practice it in a perfectly healthful way. The natives of Uganda, a region in Central Africa, offers an illustration: "The women rarely have more than two or three children; the practice is that when a woman has borne a child she is to live apart from her husband for two years, at which age children are weaned."

Seaman, speaking of the Fijians, says: "After childbirth husband and wife keep apart three and even four years, so that no other baby may interfere with the time considered necessary for suckling children."

Some fifty years ago there lived in New York a young couple, strong, healthy, ambitious to be rich, and both saving and industrious enough to become so under ordinary conditions. The husband was in a business which required constant attention; and in order to promote it and save the expense of help which he thought he could not afford, he labored nights, often up to the hours of twelve and sometimes one o'clock, and then arose early and went at it again. His wife sympathized with him in all his undertakings, helped him in every way possible, even to the sharing of his midnight toils. In no way did either of them spare themselves. They knew something of the evils of poverty, and were determined that it should not always be their lot. Fortune favored them, and their bank account grew larger and larger until they could count the value of their possessions as amounting to several million dollars. They lived in a fine country seat, and could gratify every wish, so far as food, clothing, books and travel were concerned. During their early married life, when the strain of work was the greatest, two children were born unto them, both boys, and they are alive today; but are they a comfort to their parents, and a help in their declining years? Instead of this they are both deformed and cripples, unable to help themselves or do any labor. Their family physician has told me that the overwork and privation of the parents at the time of their birth and before, was undoubtedly the cause of the children's inferiority. A younger son born after the wife had ceased to toil like a slave, gives some promise of being a man of character.

We have here a typical case of strong, healthy parents, with a limited number of offspring, yet they were not superior. On the other hand, it would be easy to collect a large number of instances where the children in large families have had superior endowments. Take Benjamin Franklin as an example. He was the fifteenth child of his father, Josiah Franklin, and the eighth of the ten children of his mother.

It seems that superiority is a result of great vigor and perfection of body and mind and of abundant reproductive power. Where this is absent the children will hardly be superior. Yet in both cases a certain degree of limitation ought to be advantageous.

In conclusion, let me say what I have indirectly said already. Let the strong, the capable and the good rear as many children as they can without overburdening themselves in any way, and let the weak, the imperfect and the bad rear few or none, but devote their lives to perfecting their own characters. In this way the future race will be modified for good and not for evil.