As to religion, I appeal both to those who love God and to those who love their fellow-man. It is futile at this time of day to quote against the living race the dictates of a dead age. It is monstrous also to slander the noble men and women who are at present engaged in the secular activities of our Churches by pretending to believe that they are not most keenly anxious to aid in any uplifting work for the regeneration of the world. Every institution which is teaching, feeding or otherwise helping children is a nucleus for Eugenic enterprise. The neglect of Eugenics in the last generation has clogged the wheels of progress in this generation. We cannot and must not forget the victims of our national neglect, but we can do greatest honour to our philanthropists and workers for the general uplift by seriously endeavouring to eliminate from the coming generation the hopelessly unfit and by encouraging the multiplication of the efficient.
There is no immorality in our proposals, as a glance at these pages will abundantly prove. The Family of the future is going to be sweeter, purer and nobler. It may even be more numerous, for while Eugenists resolutely set themselves to discourage the national burdening by debt, danger and decay which inevitably follow in the footsteps of a deteriorating race, we have nevertheless no opinions whatever as to whether a numerically large or small family is best. Race suicide is no worse than race murder. We cannot imagine a nobler sight than an enormous and increasing race of the vitally fit. A temporary and deliberate discouragement of certain unwelcome elements may be momentarily embarrassing, but this is only half the story. Our ports of entry are firmly closed in the face of undesirable aliens, not for the purpose of reducing our population, far from it. Our stability, our greatness, our very existence depend on the success with which we have attracted to our shores those immigrants whose children to-day are our boast and pride. Eugenics, it cannot be too often said, is no mere phase of Malthusianism. It is not _a_ population question it is _the_ population question. It dismisses Malthus as a spent force, as a prophet whose message was only half delivered, as a Jeremiah who would have deprived the world of its saviours as well as of its betrayers. Of Malthus it may truly be said that in forbidding those who would "wade through slaughter to a throne" he "shut the gates of mercy on mankind." No philosophy to-day can meet the needs of to-day if it indiscriminately decreases both. Both methods are evil. We must weigh as well as count. The Sphinx of civilisation sits waiting our answer to her riddle. We have mingled the seeds of evil with the seeds of good. Mere mechanical multiplication only accentuates the evil because weeds are always of quicker growth than the flower plants which they deprive of their due share of light and air. Patient division of the seeds, careful sorting, subtracting as far as possible the contaminating elements, and giving all the needful attention to the sturdy but perverse, encouraging those seeds which in various ways will one day grow into perfect trees so as to show flower; to bear fruit, give shade, make timber or in any other way serve the multifarious needs of the nation.