246 THE CONTROL OF LIFE 



ticide, in short. Now, it is possible that the time will 

 come when the noblest social sentiment and a mature 

 science will agree that this or that kind of bud, e.g. 

 certain well-understood types of defectives, should not 

 be allowed to open, but the time is not quite yet. It 

 is easy to picture the life of misery that they have even 

 under the humanest institutional treatment, and the 

 sadness with which they fill the lives of their relatives ; 

 but we do not know enough to nip their buds. It is so 

 easy to make mistakes. We must remember the weak- 

 lings who have been among the movers and shakers of 

 the world. We cannot surgically get rid of our liabili- 

 ties ; the idea makes the foundations of society tremble, 

 (c) A third suggestion is less drastic ; it aims pri- 

 marily at preventing multiplication either by sterilisa- 

 tion or by segregation. The suggestion of this always 

 arouses the worthy champions of " the liberty of the 

 subject," but the phrase is a mockery when applied 

 to those who have no true freedom, whom we know not 

 how to emancipate. When we read of the six hundred 

 weak-minded living descendants (1916) of the five 

 " Juke " sisters, we feel that restriction of the multiplica- 

 tion of such undesirable types is overdue. It takes a 

 lot of different kinds of people to make a world and 

 keep it a-going, but there is no help to be got from the 

 weak-minded and the innately licentious. Certain insane 

 types are already taken care of in asylums, must we 

 not look forward to an extension of the policy of segrega- 

 tion for a century or two ? It might be kindest and 

 most in the interests of freedom, after all, that those who, 



