President's annual address / by Martin W. Barr.

  • Barr, Martin W., 1860-1938.
Date:
[1897]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: President's annual address / by Martin W. Barr. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    themselves and society, and granting in all else greater personal freedom to the individual whether without or within institution walls. Once rendered harmless, he is free to gather all he can from life. With imbecility and its many phases of sexual perver- sion, recognized as a disease—a sure means of transmitting inherited taint—it does seem absurd that while we wage war upon microbes and bacilli, we turn loose this worse than leprosy to poison the very springs of life in more ways than one, forgetting, The evil that men do lives after them. Why do we not more closely follow nature's Jaw? All seeds, all buds, do not perpetuate their kind, and we but follow the lesson taught when we shake the bough from which falls defective fruit. We choose and set apart with care the animals best fitted for procreation, and by castration render more docile, because less passionate, the beasts of burden who are to mingle in the common herd. IThey rove at will free and unrestrained—because harmless. 1 need not point the moral nor draw further analogy. Separate the love of one's kind, and the consequent desire to project one's individuality upon the onward cur- rent of humanity, and procreation has no element above the mere animal. We all know that with imbeciles, the first is impossible, then do we not best serve them when in loosing them from the thraldom of the second, we ■release them from restraints thenceforth needless, and Itherefore open to them greater happiness in individual and in community life? Sir Thomas More says, The world is undone by viewing things at a distance. Let not this mistake tbe ours! Here, even more than in previous questions, it be- jhooves us to prepare to speak authoritatively and to give fwhen sought, as will surely be, of us an answer that can- mot be misunderstood. I say, will—the issue is even now [■upon us. That which was spoken of with bated breath, and behind closed doors, already begins to be the subject of open idiscusssion, and to appear in reputable journals. I quote [from the July number of The AltruisP;