- DEAN INGE ON THE POPULATION QUESTION.
. _ [To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] Sut,—.-Can you find room for a few lines 'in reply, to the comments in your issue of March 29th on my letter published March 22nd? II. P. T. " reproaches me for speaking with " assurance." I reply that, I felt I had something to say
on a vast and far-reaching problem, and I limited myself to forty-three lines in saying it. There was no room for self-effacing circumlocution.
This question of birth control raises three issues— (1) Excess of population ; (2) quality of population ; (3) sexual morality.
No. 1 seems to have been dealt with effectually in different ways by Sir Graham Bower and Mr. Fyson. No. 2 is such an extensive problem that one cannot hope to discuss it adequately in a newspaper correspondence. I can merely throw out the suggestion that it is possible individuals of a very high type, as individuals, may not be the type which is required by the interests of the race, merely as a race.
In other words, there may be reason ,for supposing that excessive development of the individual as an individual results in a tendency to racial sterility. Personally, I am inclined to believe that this, in general terms, is the case. No. 3 is generally evaded by birth control advocates. It is convenient to assume that sexual morality is puritanical, or hypocritical.
"H. P. T.'s " observation that the birth of a child may not result from the sexual act is a mere _quibble. In the ordinary course of nature, it is inevitable. When it does not happen it is because some incidental or accidental circumstance has intervened to interfere with the normal course of nature. To say, therefore, that I ignore ninety-nine eases and base a sweeping generalization on the hundredth is obviously untrue.—I am, Sir, &c.,
HOMO SAPIENS.
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