Chapter 7

Desire for family limitation result of our social system.--Desire and practice not uniform through all classes.--The best limit, the worst do not.--Early marriages and large families.--N.Z. marriage rates.--Those who delay, and those who abstain from marriage.--Good motives mostly actuate.--All limitation implies restraint.--Birth-rates vary inversely with prudence and self-control.--The limited family usually born in early married life when progeny is less likely to be well developed.--Our worst citizens most prolific. Effect of poverty on fecundity.--Effect of alcoholic intemperance.--Effect of mental and physical defects.--Defectives propagate their kind.--The intermittent inhabitants of Asylums and Gaols constitute the greatest danger to society.--Character the resultant of two forces--motor impulse and inhibition.--Chief criminal characteristic is defective inhibition.--This defect is strongly hereditary.--It expresses itself in unrestrained fertility.