The true task of a political economy which has the true happiness of man at heart should be to encourage the procreation of happy, useful, healthy and hard-working individuals. To build an ever increasing number of hospitals, asylums for lunatics, idiots and incurables, reformatories, etc., to provide them with every comfort and manage them scientifically, is undoubtedly a very fine thing, and speaks well of the progress and development of human sympathy. But what is forgotten is that by concerning ourselves almost exclusively with human ruins, the results of our social abuses, we gradually weaken the force of the healthy portion of the population. By attacking the roots of the evil and limiting the procreation of the unfit we shall be performing a work which is much more humanitarian, if less striking in effect. Formerly, our economists and politicians hardly have considered this question, and even now very few are interested in it because it brings no honors, nor money, as we do not ourselves see the fruits of such efforts. In short, we amuse ourselves with repairing the ruins, but are afraid to attack what makes these ruins. P. 465–6. The anti-conceptional measures recommended have been often condemned, sometimes as immoral, sometimes as contrary to aesthetics. To interfere in this way with the action of nature is said to injure the poetry of love and the moral feeling, and at the same time to disturb natural selection. There are several replies to these objections. In the first place, it is wrong to maintain that man cannot encroach on the life of nature. If this were the case, the earth would now be a virgin forest, and a great many plants and animals would not have been adapted to the use of man. We have proved without deference, often with a brutal hand, to the misfortune of art and poetry, that we are capable of successfully meddling with the machinery of nature, even in what concerns our own persons. The aesthetic argument appears, at first sight, more valid. It is unnecessary, however, to discuss matters of taste. From all points of view, the details of coitus leave much to be desired from the aesthetic point of view, and such a slight addition as a protective does not appear to make any serious difference. P. 497–8. She, (woman) ought to develop herself strongly and healthily by working along with man in body and mind by procreating numerous children when she is strong, robust and intelligent. But this does not nullify the advantage that may accrue from limiting the number of conceptions when the bodily and mental qualities are wanting in the procreators. P. 332. One of the most difficult and important future tasks of social science toward humanity is to set free sexual relations from the tyranny of religious dogmas by placing them in harmony with the true and purely human laws of natural science. P. 357. In no animal do we find the abuses which man is permitted to practice toward his wife and children. P. 368.