“If one failed, it was nature’s sign that he was not wanted, and he had no business to have children. But the optimists declared it to be impossible to return to the barbarous conditions that prevailed in ancient times among savages. Nature, said they, has evolved civilization and altruism, and these are therefore as natural as barbarism. But nature preserves a certain congruity of relationship between things, that we cannot easily set aside, and so if we are going backward in regard to the care of our young we shall lose the advantages that we have gained in the improved quality of the citizens, we have made out of them. For if we throw all the responsibility on the parents, while we cannot depend on a reduction in the number of the children, we may be sure of a deterioration in their bringing up and education. If we go back to barbarism we must take all that barbarism imposes. The human race they said was born to luck. Whenever it got into a tight place, some lucky turn of fortune’s wheel always supplied its need and brought it out of its troubles, and they avowed their faith that something would yet turn up to tide the race over the present crisis. In the midst of these discussions, a great discovery was made or accidentally stumbled upon that gave confirmation to this hopeful philosophy, and relieved the fears of those philosophers who were in the habit of taking the destiny of the race very much to heart and who felt more or less responsibility for its future. That was a discovery of nature’s secret of the determination of sex. It enabled people to control the sex of their children, a power that had been ardently wished for ever since the days of Adam and scientifically sought after, at least as far back as the time of Aristotle. They thought that in this “option of sex,” as they styled it, they at last possessed the infinitely important power of the control of population. They had seen before this, that no restriction could succeed, not founded on the support of all. All discussion in this direction was brought to a sudden termination, by this timely discovery. All felt as if the great problem was solved in the most acceptable manner, not only in accordance with refined sentiment, but with the pressing requirements of society, because this vital condition that so intimately concerns us all is taken up by the state and administered for the benefit of the whole race.