The State would in this way best put a stop to artificial abortion if, in addition to the above-mentioned removal of the disgrace attached to illegitimate motherhood, it diffused widely among all classes of society a knowledge of the permissible means for the prevention of pregnancy.
The fact that neo-malthusian methods are chiefly employed in large towns, indicates their dependence upon economical considerations, and upon the struggle for existence, which is especially severe in large towns. Hope for the future rests upon the removal of moral and legal coercion in marriage, in which Gutzkow (“Säkularbilder,” i. 174, 175) saw the principal causes of social and sexual misery; and upon the rational regulation of methods for the prevention of pregnancy, which must be regarded as in no way identical with the hostility to “fruitfulness” in the sense of Weininger. On the contrary, the yearning for children, and the joy in their possession, will then, for the first time, obtain their natural satisfaction.
[709] Cf. his classical essay, “Population: its Natural Subdivision and Movement,” published in “Elements of General Political Economy,” vol. i., pp. 158-187 (Leipzig, 1901).
[710] Cf. Franz Oppenheimer, “The Law of Population of T. R. Malthus, and the more Recent Political Economists: a Demonstration and a Criticism” (Bern, 1900). See also the interesting demonstration and criticism of the malthusian doctrine in the work of Henry George, “Progress and Poverty.”
[711] A notable example of such advances is found in the recently discovered method of inoculating the soil with nitrifying organisms, whereby barren lands are made fertile at trifling cost.-Translator.
[712] Eli Metchnikoff, “The Nature of Man.”—English translation by Chalmers Mitchell, pp. 101-107; Heinemann, London, 1903.
[713] A more detailed account of this interesting “politico-economical” operation will be found in the work of Max Bartels, “Medicine among Savage Races,” pp. 297, 298 (Leipzig, 1893).
[714] The ancients were also familiar with preventive methods of intercourse and with abortion. Widely renowned is the passage of the historian Polybius (XXXVII. ix. 5) in which we read: “In my time the whole of Greece suffered from an insufficiency of children—speaking generally, from a lack of men; for men had become so much accustomed to good living, to the greed for money, and to every comfort, that they no longer wished to marry, or, at any rate, they wished to have only a few children. Not the sword of the enemy was it that depopulated the ancient States, but the lack of offspring.” In Spain also, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, in consequence of the wealth acquired in the New World, there resulted an overwhelming dread of marriage and child-bearing, so that the population became reduced to nine millions, and the bringing up of four children was rewarded with a title of nobility (cf. J. Unold, “Duties and Aims of Human Life,” p. 110; Leipzig, 1904).
[715] Cf. E. H. Kisch, “Artificial Sterility,” published in Eulenburg’s “Real-Enzyklopädie,” third edition, 1900, vol. xxiii., p. 372. See also the elaborate discussion of artificial sterility and means for the prevention of conception in Kisch’s work, “The Sexual Life of Woman,” English translation by M. Eden Paul (Rebman Limited, London, 1908).