270 



THE EVOLUTION OF SEX. 



bility," while even more culpable is that consciously or unconsciously 

 derived from the profitableness to the capitalist classes of unlimited 

 competition of cheap unskilled labor. For never did the proletariat 

 more literally deserve its name than since the advent of the factory 

 period, their rapid and degenerative increase, indeed, primarily repre- 

 senting ' ' the progress of investments. ' ' 



The general attitude of the modern Malthusian may first of all be 

 roughly indicated by quoting the mottoes which head the organ of 

 their league. " To a rational being, the prudential check to popula- 

 tion ought to be considered as equally natural with the check from 

 poverty and premature mortality " (Malthus, 1806). " Little improve- 

 ment can be expected in morality until the production of large 

 families is regarded in the same light as drunkenness, or any other 

 physicial excess" (John Stuart Mill, 1872). "Surely it is better to 

 have thirty-five millions of human beings leading useful and intelligent 

 lives, rather than forty millions struggling painfully for a bare 

 subsistence" (Lord Derby, 1879). Starting from the familiar induc- 

 tion that "population has a constant tendency to outrun the means of 

 subsistence," they recognize in this over- population " the most fruitful 

 source of pauperism, ignorance, crime, and disease." To counteract 

 this there are checks, positive or life-destroying on the one hand, 

 prudential or birth-preventing on the other. "The positive or life- 

 destroying checks comprehend the premature death of children and 

 adults by disease, starvation, war, and infanticide." As these positive 

 checks are happily reduced with the progress of society, attention 

 must be concentrated on the other side. "This consists in the 

 limitation of offspring by abstention from marriage, or by prudence 

 after marriage." But as to the first, prolonged abstention from 

 marriage, as advocated by Malthus, this is "productive of many 

 diseases, and of much sexual vice," while "early marriage, on the 

 contrary, tends to secure sexual purity, domestic comfort, social 

 happiness, and individual health." The check that remains to be 

 advocated is thus "prudence after marriage," and by this the neo- 

 Malthusians most distinctly mean attention to methods which will 

 secure that sexual intercourse be not followed by fertilization. For the 

 details of the various methods, we must refer to the Malthusian 

 literature ; but a brief outline is imperative, even for an approximate 

 understanding of the problem. 



(a) Thus we have the suggestion that intercourse should be 

 limited to the relatively infertile period most remote from menstruation, 

 when conception may indeed occur, but with less probability than at 

 other periods. Although gynaecologists are disagreed as to the 

 degree of this probability, there can be little doubt that such 



