On the other hand, in all the countries, probably without exception, in which a large natural increase is effected by the efforts of an immense birth-rate to overcome an enormous death-rate the end is only effected with much friction and misery, and the process is accompanied by a general retardation of civilization.

"The greater the number of children," as Hamburger puts it, "the greater the cost of each survivor to the family and to the State."

Russia presents not only the most typical but the most stupendous and appalling example of this process. Thirty years ago the mortality of infants under one year was three times that of Norway, nearly double that of England. More recently (1896-1900) the infantile mortality in Russia has fallen from 313 to 261, but as that of the other countries has also fallen it still preserves nearly the same relative position, remaining the highest in Europe, while if we compare it with countries outside Europe we find it is considerably more than four times greater than that of South Australia. In one town in the government of Perm, some years ago if not still, the mortality of infants under one year regularly reached 45 per cent, and the deaths of children under five years constituted half the total mortality. This is abnormally high even for Russia, but for all Russia it was found that of the boys born in a single year during the second half of the last century only 50 per cent reached their twenty-first year, and even of these only 37.6 per cent were fit for military service. It is estimated that there die in Russia 15 per thousand more individuals than among the same number in England; this excess mortality represents a loss of 1,650,000 lives to the State every year.[106]

Thus Russia has the highest birth-rate and at the same time the highest death-rate. The large countries which, after Russia, have the highest infantile mortality are Austria, Hungary, Prussia, Spain, Italy, and Japan; all these, as we should expect, have a somewhat high birth-rate.

The case of Japan is interesting as that of a vigorous young Eastern nation, which has assimilated Western ways and is encountering the evils which come of those ways. Japan is certainly worthy of all our admiration for the skill and vigour with which it has affirmed its young nationality along Western lines. But when the vital statistics of Japan are vaguely referred to either as a model for our imitation or as a threatening peril to us, we may do well to look into the matter a little more closely. The infantile mortality of Japan (1908) is 157, a very high figure, 50 per cent higher than that of England, much more than double that of New Zealand, or South Australia. Moreover, it has rapidly risen during the last ten years. The birth-rate of Japan in 1901-2 was high (36), though it has since fallen to the level of ten years ago. But the death-rate has risen concomitantly (to over 24 per 1000), and has continued to rise notwithstanding the slight decline in the birth-rate. We see here a tendency to the sinister combination of a falling birth-rate with a rising death-rate.[107] It is obvious that such a tendency, if continued, will furnish a serious problem to Japanese social reformers, and at the same time make it impossible for Western alarmists to regard the rise of Japan as a menace to the world.

It is behind China that these alarmists, when driven from every other position, finally entrench themselves. "The ultimate future of these islands may be to the Chinese," incautiously exclaims Mr. Sidney Webb, who on many subjects, unconnected with China, speaks with authority. The knowledge of the vital statistics of China possessed by our alarmists is vague to the most extreme degree, but as the knowledge of all of us is scarcely less vague, they assume that their position is fairly safe. That, however, is an altogether questionable assumption. It seems to be quite true—though in the absence of exact statistics it may not be certain—that the birth-rate in China is very high. But it is quite certain that the infantile death-rate is extremely high. "Out of ten children born among us, three, normally the weakest three, will fail to grow up: out of ten children born in China these weakest three will die, and probably five more besides," writes Professor Ross, who is intimately acquainted with Chinese conditions, and has closely questioned thirty-three physicians practising in various parts of China.[108] Matignon, a French physician familiar with China, states that it is the custom for a woman to suckle her child for at least three years; should pregnancy occur during this period, it is usual, and quite legal, to procure abortion. Infants brought up by hand are fed on rice-flour and water, and consequently they nearly all die.[109]

Putting aside altogether the question of infanticide, such a state of things is far from incredible when we remember the extremely insanitary state of China, the superstitions that flourish unchecked, and the famines, floods, and pestilences that devastate the country. It would appear probable that when vital statistics are introduced into China they will reveal a condition of things very similar to that we find in Russia, but in a more marked degree. No doubt it is a state of things which will be remedied. It is a not unreasonable assumption, supported by many indications, that China will follow Japan in the adoption of Western methods of civilization.[110] These methods, as we know, involve in the end a low birth-rate with a general tendency to a lower death-rate. Neither in the near nor in the remote future, under present conditions or under probable future conditions, is there any reason for imagining that the Chinese are likely to replace the Europeans in Europe.[111]

This preliminary survey of the ground may enable us to realize that not only must we be cautious in attaching importance to the crude birth-rate until it is corrected, but that even as usually corrected the birth-rate can give us no clue at all to natural increase because there is a marked tendency for the birth-rate and the infantile death-rate to rise or sink together. Moreover, it is evident that we have also to realize that from the point of view of society and civilization there is a vast difference between the natural increase which is achieved by the effort of an enormously high birth-rate to overcome an almost correspondingly high death-rate and the natural increase which is attained by the dominance of a low birth-rate over a still lower death-rate.

Having thus cleared the ground, we may proceed to attempt the interpretation of the declining birth-rate which marks civilization, and to discuss its significance.

II

It must be admitted that it is not usual to consider the question of the declining birth-rate from a broad or scientific standpoint. As we have seen, no attempt is usually made to correct the crude birth-rate; still more rarely is it pointed out that we cannot consider the significance of a falling birth-rate apart from the question of the death-rate, and that the net increase or decrease in a nation can only be judged by taking both these factors into account. It is scarcely necessary to add, in view of so superficial a way of looking at the problem, that we hardly ever find any attempt to deal with the more fundamental question of the meaning of a low birth-rate, and the problematical character of the advantages of rapid multiplication. The whole question is usually left to the ignorant preachers of the gospel of brute force, would-be patriots who desire their own country to increase at the cost of all other countries, not merely in ignorance of the fact that the crude birth-rate is not the index of increase, but reckless of the effect their desire, if fulfilled, would have upon all the higher and finer ends of living.

When the question is thus narrowly and ignorantly considered, it is usual to account for the decreased birth-rate, the smaller average families, and the tendency to postpone the age of marriage, as due mainly to a love of luxury and vice, combined with a newly acquired acquaintance with Neo-Malthusian methods,[112] which must be combated, and may successfully be combated, by inculcating, as a moral and patriotic duty, the necessity of marrying early and procreating large families.[113] In France, the campaign against the religious Orders in their educational capacity, while doubtless largely directed against educational inefficiency, was also supported by the feeling that such education is not on the side of family life; and Arsene Dumont, one of the most vigorous champions of a strenuously active policy for increasing the birth-rate, openly protested against allowing any place as teachers to priests, monks, and nuns, whose direct and indirect influence must degrade the conception of sex and its duties while exalting the place of celibacy. In the United States, also, Engelmann, who, as a gynaecologist, was able to see this process from behind the scenes, urged his fellow-countrymen "to stay the dangerous and criminal practices which are the main determining factors of decreasing fecundity, and which deprive women of health, the family of its highest blessings, and the nation of its staunchest support."[114]

We must, however, look at these phenomena a little more broadly, and bring them into relation with other series of phenomena. It is almost beyond dispute that a voluntary restriction of the number of offspring by Neo-Malthusian practices is at least one of the chief methods by which the birth-rate has been lowered. It may not indeed be—and probably, as we shall see, is not—the only method. It has even been denied that the prevalence of Neo-Malthusian practices counts at all.[115] Thus while Coghlan, the Government Statistician of New South Wales, concludes that the decline in the birth-rate in the Australian Commonwealth was due to "the art of applying artificial checks to conception," McLean, the Government Statistician of Victoria, concludes that it was "due mainly to natural causes." [116] He points out that when the birth-rate in Australia, half a century ago, was nearly 43 per 1000, the population consisted chiefly of men and women at the reproductive period of life, and that since then the proportion of persons at these ages has declined, leading necessarily to a decline in the crude birth-rate. If we compare the birth-rate of communities among women of the same age-periods, McLean argues, we may obtain results quite different from the crude birth-rate. Thus the crude birth-rate of Buda-Pesth is much higher than that of New South Wales, but if we ascertain the birth-rate of married women at different age-periods (15 to 20, 20 to 25, etc.) the New South Wales birth-rate is higher for every age-period than that of Buda-Pesth. McLean considers that in young communities with many vigorous immigrants the population is normally more prolific than in older and more settled communities, and that hardships and financial depression still more depress the birth-rate. He further emphasizes the important relationship, which we must never lose sight of in this connection, between a high birth-rate and a high death-rate, especially a high infantile death-rate, and he believes, indeed, that "the solution of the problem of the general decline in the birth-rate throughout all civilized communities lies in the preservation of human life." The mechanism of the connection would be, he maintains, that prolonged suckling in the case of living children increases the intervals between childbearing. As we have seen, there is a tendency, though not a rigid and invariable necessity,[117] for a high birth-rate to be associated with a high infantile death-rate, and a low birth-rate with a low infantile death-rate. Thus in Victoria, we have the striking fact that while the birth-rate has declined 24 per cent the infantile death-rate has declined approximately to the still greater extent of 27 per cent.

No doubt the chief cause of the reduction of the birth-rate has been its voluntary restriction by preventive methods due to the growth of intelligence, knowledge, and foresight. In all the countries where a marked decline in the birth-rate has occurred there is good reason to believe that Neo-Malthusian methods are generally known and practised. So far as England is concerned this is certainly the case. A few years ago Mr. Sidney Webb made inquiries among middle-class people in all parts of the country, and found that in 316 marriages 242 were thus limited and only 74 unlimited, while for the ten years 1890-9 out of 120 marriages 107 were limited and only 13 unlimited, but as five of these 13 were childless there were only 8 unlimited fertile marriages out of 120. As to the causes assigned for limiting the number of children, in 73 out of 128 cases in which particulars were given under this head the poverty of the parents in relation to their standard of comfort was a factor; sexual ill-health—that is, generally, the disturbing effect of child-bearing—in 24; and other forms of ill-health of the parents in 38 cases; in 24 cases the disinclination of the wife was a factor, and the death of a parent had in 8 cases terminated the marriage.[118] In the skilled artisan class there is also good reason to believe that the voluntary limitation of families is constantly becoming more usual, and the statistics of benefit societies show a marked decline in the fertility of superior working-class people during recent years; thus it is stated by Sidney Webb that the Hearts of Oak Friendly Society paid benefits on child-birth to 2472 per 10,000 members in 1880; by 1904 the proportion had fallen to 1165 per 10,000, a much greater fall than occurred in England generally.

The voluntary adoption of preventive precautions may not be, however, the only method by which the birth-rate has declined; we may have also to recognize a concomitant physiological sterility, induced by delayed marriage and its various consequences; we have also to recognize pathological sterility due to the impaired vitality and greater liability to venereal disease of an increasingly urban life; and we may have to recognize that stocks differ from one another in fertility.

The delay in marriage, as studied in England, is so far apparently slight; the mean age of marriage for all husbands in England has increased from 28.43 in 1896 to 28.88 in 1909, and the mean age of all wives from 26.21 in 1896 to 26.69 in 1909. This seems a very trifling rate of progression. If, however, we look at the matter in another way we find that there has been an extremely serious reduction in the number of marriages between 15 to 20, normally the most fecund of all age-periods. Between 1876 and 1880 (according to the Registrar-General's Report for 1909) the proportion of minors in 1000 marriages in England and Wales was 77.8 husbands and 217.0 wives. In 1909 it had fallen to only 39.8 husbands and 137.7 wives. It has been held that this has not greatly affected the decline in the birth-rate. Its tendency, however, must be in that direction. It is true that Engelmann argued that delayed marriages had no effect at all on the birth-rate. But it has been clearly shown that as the age of marriage increases fecundity distinctly diminishes.[119] This is illustrated by the specially elaborate statistics of Scotland for 1855;[120] the number of women having children, that is, the fecundity, was higher in the years 15 to 19, than at any subsequent age-period, except 20 to 24, and the fact that the earliest age-group is not absolutely highest is due to the presence of a number of immature women. In New South Wales, Coghlan has shown that if the average number of children is 3.6, then a woman marrying at 20 may expect to have five children, a woman marrying at 28 three children, at 32 two children, and at 37 one child. Newsholme and Stevenson, again, conclude that the general law of decline of fertility with advancing age of the mother is shown in various countries, and that in nearly all countries the mothers aged 15 to 20 have the largest number of children; the chief exception is in the case of some northern countries like Norway and Finland, where women develop late, and there it is the mothers of 20 to 25 who have the largest number of children.[121] The postponement in the age of marriage during recent years is, however, so slight that it can only account for a small part of the decline in the birth-rate; Coghlan calculates that of unborn possible children in New South Wales the loss of only about one-sixth is to be attributed to this cause. In London, however, Heron considers that the recognized connection between a low birth-rate and a high social standing might have been entirely accounted for sixty years ago by postponement of marriage, and that such postponement may still account for 50 per cent of it.[122]

It is not enough, however, to consider the mechanism by which the birth-rate declines; to realize the significance of the decline we must consider the causes which set the mechanism in action.

We begin to obtain a truer insight into the meaning of the curve of a country's birth-rate when we realize that it is in relation with the industrial and commercial activity of the country.[123] It is sometimes stated that a high birth-rate goes with a high degree of national prosperity. That, however, is scarcely the case; we have to look into the matter a little more closely. And, when we do so, we find that, not only is the statement of a supposed connection between a high birth-rate and a high degree of prosperity an imperfect statement; it is altogether misleading.

If, in the first place, we attempt to consider the state of things among savages, we find, indeed, great variations, and the birth-rate is not infrequently low. But, on the whole, it would appear, the marriage-rate, the birth-rate, and, it may be added, the death-rate are all alike high. Karl Ranke has investigated the question with considerable care among the Trumai and Nahuqua Indians of Central Brazil.[124] These tribes are yet totally uncontaminated by contact with European influences; consumption and syphilis are alike unknown. In the two villages he investigated in detail, Ranke found that every man over twenty-five years of age was married, and that the only unmarried woman he discovered was feeble-minded. The average size of the families of those women who were over forty years of age was between five and six children, while, on the other hand, the mortality among children was great, and a relatively small proportion of the population reached old age. We see therefore that, among these fairly typical savages, living under simple natural conditions, the fertility of the women is as high as it is among all but the most prolific of European peoples; while, in striking contrast with European peoples, among whom a large percentage of the population never marry, and of those who do, many have no children, practically every man and woman both marries and produces children.

If we leave savages out of the question and return to Europe, it is still instructive to find that among those peoples who live under the most primitive conditions much the same state of things may be found as among savages. This is notably the case as regards Russia. In no other great European country do the bulk of the women marry at so early an age, and in no other is the average size of the family so large. And, concomitantly with a very high marriage-rate and a very high birth-rate, we find in Russia, in an equally high degree, the prevalence among the masses of infantile and general mortality, disease (epidemical and other), starvation, misery.[125]

So far we scarcely see any marked connection between high fertility and prosperity. It is more nearly indicated in the high birth-rate of Hungary—only second to that of Russia, and also accompanied by a high mortality—which is associated with the rapid and notable development of a young nationality. The case of Hungary is, indeed, typical. In so far as high fertility is associated with prosperity, it is with the prosperity of a young and unstable community, which has experienced a sudden increase of wealth and a sudden expansion. The case of Western Australia illustrates the same point. Thirty years ago the marriage-rate and the birth-rate of this colony were on the same level as those of the other Australian colonies; but a sudden industrial expansion occurred, both rates rose, and in 1899 the fertility of Western Australia was higher than that of any other English-speaking community.[126]

If now we put together the facts observed in savage life and the facts observed in civilized life, we shall begin to see the real nature of the factors that operate to raise or lower the fertility of a community. It is far, indeed, from being prosperity which produces a high fertility, for the most wretched communities are the most prolific, but, on the other hand, it is by no means the mere absence of prosperity which produces fertility, for we constantly observe that the on-coming of a wave of prosperity elevates the birth-rate. In both cases alike it is the absence of social-economic restraints which conduces to high fertility. In the simple, primitive community of savages, serfs, or slaves, there is no restraint on either nutritive or reproductive enjoyments; there is no adequate motive for restraint; there are no claims of future wants to inhibit the gratification of present wants; there are no high standards, no ideals. Supposing, again, that such restraints have been established by a certain amount of forethought as regards the future, or a certain calculation as to social advantages to be gained by limiting the number of children, a check on natural fertility is established. But a sudden accession of prosperity—a sudden excess of work and wages and food—sweeps away this check by apparently rendering it unnecessary; the natural reproductive impulse is liberated by this rising wave, and we here see whatever truth there is in the statement that prosperity means a high birth-rate. In reality, however, prosperity in such a case merely increases fertility because its sudden affluence reduces a community to the same careless indifference in regard to the future, the same hasty snatching at the pleasures of the moment, as we find among the most hopeless and least prosperous communities. It is a significant fact, as shown by Beveridge, that the years when the people of Great Britain marry most are the years when they drink most. It is in the absence of social-economic restraints—the absence of the perception of such restraints, or the absence of the ability to act in accordance with such perception—that the birth-rate is high.

Arsene Dumont seems to have been one of the first who observed this significance of the oscillation of the birth-rate, though he expressed it in a somewhat peculiar way, as the social capillarity theory. It is the natural and universal tendency of mankind to ascend, he declared; a high birth-rate and a strong ascensional impulse are mutually contradictory. Large families are only possible when there is no progress, and no expectation of it can be cherished; small families become possible when the way has been opened to progress. "One might say," Dumont puts it, "that invisible valves, like those which direct the circulation of the blood, have been placed by Nature to direct the current of human aspiration in the upward path it has prescribed." As the proletariat is enabled to enjoy the prospect of rising it comes under the action of this law of social capillarity, and the birth-rate falls. It is the effort towards an indefinite perfection, Dumont declares, which justifies Nature and Man, consoles us for our griefs, and constitutes our sovereign safeguard against the philosophy of despair.[127]

When we thus interpret the crude facts of the falling birth-rate, viewing them widely and calmly in connection with the other social facts with which they are intimately related, we are able to see how foolish has been the outcry against a falling birth-rate, and how false the supposition that it is due to a new selfishness replacing an ancient altruism.[128] On the contrary, the excessive birth-rate of the early industrial period was directly stimulated by selfishness. There were no laws against child-labour; children were produced that they might be sent out, when little more than babies, to the factories and the mines to increase their parents' income. The fundamental instincts of men and women do not change, but their direction can be changed. In this field the change is towards a higher transformation, introducing a finer economy into life, diminishing death, disease, and misery, making possible the finer ends of living, and at the same time indirectly and even directly improving the quality of the future race.[129] This is now becoming recognized by nearly all calm and sagacious inquirers.[130] The wild outcry of many unbalanced persons to-day, that a falling birth-rate means degeneration and disaster, is so altogether removed from the sphere of reason that we ought perhaps to regard it as comparable to those manias which, in former centuries, have assumed other forms more attractive to the neurotic temperament of those days; fortunately, it is a mania which, in the nature of things, is powerless to realize itself, and we need not anticipate that the outcry against small families will have the same results as the ancient outcry against witches.[131]

It may be proper at this stage to point out that while, in the foregoing statement, a high birth-rate and a high marriage-rate have been regarded as practically the same thing, we need to make a distinction. The true relation of the two rates may be realized when it is stated that, the more primitive a community is, the more closely the two rates vary together. As a community becomes more civilized and more complex, the two rates tend to diverge; the restraints on child-production are deeper and more complex than those on marriage, so that the removal of the restraint on marriage by no means removes the restraint on fertility. They tend to diverge in opposite directions. Farr considered the marriage-rate among civilized peoples as a barometer of national prosperity. In former years, when corn was a great national product, the marriage-rate in England rose regularly as the price of wheat fell. Of recent years it has become very difficult to estimate exactly what economic factors affect the marriage-rate. It is believed by some that the marriage-rate rises or falls with the value of exports.[132] Udny Yule, however, in an expertly statistical study of the matter,[133] finds (in agreement with Hooker) that neither exports nor imports tally with the marriage-rate. He concludes that the movement of prices is a predominant—though by no means the sole—factor in the change of marriage-rates, a fall in prices producing a fall in the marriage-rates and also in the birth-rates, though he also thinks that pressure on the labour market has forced both rates lower than the course of prices would lead one to expect. In so far as these causes are concerned, Udny Yule states, the fall is quite normal and pessimistic views are misplaced. Udny Yule, however, appears to be by no means confident that his explanation covers a large part of the causation, and he admits that he cannot understand the rationale of the connection between marriage-rates and prices. The curves of the marriage-rates in many countries indicate a maximum about or shortly before, 1875, when the birth-rate also tended to reach a maximum, and another rise towards 1900, thus making the intermediate curve concave. There was, however, a large rise in money wages between 1860 and 1875, and the rise in the consuming power of the population has been continuous since 1850. Thus the factors favourable to a high marriage-rate must have risen from 1850 to a maximum about 1870-1875, and since then have fallen continuously. This statement, which Mr. Udny Yule emphasizes, certainly seems highly significant from our present point of view. It falls into line with the view here accepted, that the first result of a sudden access of prosperity is to produce a general orgy, a reckless and improvident haste to take advantage of the new prosperity, but that, as the effects of the orgy wear off, it necessarily gives place to new ideals, and to higher standards of life which lead to caution and prudence. Mr. N.A. Hooker seems to have perceived this, and in the discussion which followed the reading of Udny Yule's paper he set forth what (though it was not accepted by Udny Yule) may perhaps fairly be regarded as the sound view of the matter. "During the great expansion of trade prior to 1870," he remarked, "the means of satisfying the desired standard of comfort were increasing much more rapidly than the rise in the standard; hence a decreasing age of marriage and a marriage-rate above the normal. After about 1873, however, the means of satisfying the standard of comfort no longer increased with the same rapidity, and then a new factor, he thought, became important, viz. the increased intelligence of the people."[134] This seems to be precisely the same view of the matter as I have here sought to set forth; prosperity is not civilization, its first tendency is to produce a reckless abandonment to the satisfaction of the crudest impulses. But as prosperity develops it begins to engender more complex ideals and higher standards; the inevitable result is a greater forethought and restraint.[135]

If we consider, not the marriage-rate, but the average age at marriage, and especially the age of the woman, which varies less than that of the man, the results, though harmonious, would not be quite the same. The general tendency as regards the age of girls at marriage is summed up by Ploss and Bartels, in their monumental work on Woman, in the statement: "It may be said in general that the age of girls at marriage is lower, the lower the stage of civilization is in the community to which they belong."[136] We thus see one reason why it is that, in an advanced stage of civilization, a high marriage-rate is not necessarily associated with a high birth-rate. A large number of women who marry late may have fewer children than a smaller number who marry early.

We may see the real character of the restraints on fertility very well illustrated by the varying birth-rate of the upper and lower social classes belonging to the same community. If a high birth-rate were a mark of prosperity or of advanced civilization, we should expect to find it among the better social class of a community. But the reverse is the case; it is everywhere the least prosperous and the least cultured classes of a community which show the highest birth-rate. As we go from the very poor to the very rich quarters of a great city—whether Paris, Berlin, or Vienna—the average number of children to the family diminishes regularly. The difference is found in the country as well as in the towns. In Holland, for instance, whether in town or country, there are 5.19 children per marriage among the poor, and only 4.50 among the rich. In London it is notorious that the same difference appears; thus Charles Booth, the greatest authority on the social conditions of London, in the concluding volume of his vast survey, sums up the condition of things in the statement that "the lower the class the earlier the period of marriage and the greater the number of children born to each marriage." The same phenomenon is everywhere found, and it is one of great significance.

The significance becomes clearer when we realize that an urban population must always be regarded as more "civilized" than a rural population, and that, in accordance with that fact, an urban population tends to be less prolific than a rural population. The town birth-rate is nearly always lower than the country birth-rate. In Germany this is very marked, and the rapidly growing urbanization of Germany is accompanied by a great fall of the birth-rate in the large cities, but not in the rural districts. In England the fall is more widespread, and though the birth-rate is much higher in the country than in the towns the decline in the rural birth-rate is now proceeding more rapidly than that in the urban birth-rate. England, which once contained a largely rural population, now possesses a mainly urban population. Every year it becomes more urban; while the town population grows, the rural population remains stationary; so that, at the present time, for every inhabitant of the country in England, there are more than three town-dwellers. As the country-dweller is more prolific than the town-dweller, this means that the rural population is constantly being poured into the towns. The larger our great cities grow, the more irresistible becomes the attraction which they exert on the children of the country, who are fascinated by them, as the birds are fascinated by the lighthouse or the moths by the candle. And the results are not altogether unlike those which this analogy suggests. At the present time, one-third of the population of London is made up of immigrants from the country. Yet, notwithstanding this immense and constant stream of new and vigorous blood, it never suffices to raise the urban population to the same level of physical and nervous stability which the rural population possesses. More alert, more vivacious, more intelligent, even more urbane in the finer sense, as the urban population becomes,—not perhaps at first, but in the end,—it inevitably loses its stamina, its reserves of vital energy. Dr. Cantlie very properly defines a Londoner as a person whose grandparents all belonged to London—and he could not find any. Dr. Harry Campbell has found a few who could claim London grandparents; they were poor specimens of humanity.[137] Even on the intellectual side there are no great Londoners. It is well known that a number of eminent men have been born in London; but, in the course of a somewhat elaborate study of the origins of British men of genius, I have not been able to find that any were genuinely Londoners by descent.[138] An urban life saps that calm and stolid strength which is necessary for all great effort and stress, physical or intellectual. The finest body of men in London, as a class, are the London police, and Charles Booth states that only 17 per cent of the London police are born in London, a smaller proportion than any other class of the London population except the army and navy. As Mr. N.C. Macnamara has pointed out, it is found that London men do not possess the necessary nervous stability and self-possession for police work; they are too excitable and nervous, lacking the equanimity, courage, and self-reliance of the rural men. Just in the same way, in Spain, the bull-fighters, a body of men admirable for their graceful strength, their modesty, courage, and skill, nearly always come from country districts, although it is in the towns that the enthusiasm for bull-fighting is centred. Therefore, it would appear that until urban conditions of life are greatly improved, the more largely urban a population becomes, the more is its standard of vital and physical efficiency likely to be lowered. This became clearly visible during the South African War; it was found at Manchester (as stated by Dr. T.P. Smith and confirmed by Dr. Clayton) that among 11,000 young men who volunteered for enlistment, scarcely more than 10 per cent could pass the surgeon's examination, although the standard of physique demanded was extremely low, while Major-General Sir F. Maurice has stated[139] that, even when all these rejections have been made, of those who actually are enlisted, at the end of two years only two effective soldiers are found for every five who enlist. It is not difficult to see a bearing of these facts on the birth-rate. The civilized world is becoming a world of towns, and, while the diminished birth-rate of towns is certainly not mainly the result of impaired vitality, these phenomena are correlative facts of the first importance for every country which is using up its rural population and becoming a land of cities.

From our present point of view it is thus a very significant fact that the equipoise between country-dwellers and town-dwellers has been lost, that the towns are gaining at the expense of the country whose surplus population they absorb and destroy. The town population is not only disinclined to propagate; it is probably in some measure unfit to propagate.

At the same time, we must not too strongly emphasize this aspect of the matter; such over-emphasis of a single aspect of highly complex phenomena constantly distorts our vision of great social processes. We have already seen that it is inaccurate to assert any connection between a high birth-rate and a high degree of national prosperity, except in so far as at special periods in the history of a country a sudden wave of prosperity may temporarily remove the restraints on natural fertility. Prosperity is only one of the causes that tend to remove the restraint on the birth-rate; and it is a cause that is never permanently effective.

III

To get to the bottom of the matter, we thus find it is necessary to look into it more closely than is usually attempted. When we ask ourselves why prosperity fails permanently to remove the restraints on fertility the answer is, that it speedily creates new restraints. Prosperity and civilization are far from being synonymous terms. The savage who is able to glut himself with the whale that has just been stranded on his coast, is more prosperous than he was the day before, but he is not more civilized, perhaps a trifle less so. The working community that is suddenly glutted by an afflux of work and wages is in exactly the same position as the savage who is suddenly enabled to fill himself with a rich mass of decaying blubber. It is prosperity; it is not civilization.[140] But, while prosperity leads at first to the reckless and unrestrained gratification of the simplest animal instincts of nutrition and reproduction, it tends, when it is prolonged, to evolve more complex instincts. Aspirations become less crude, the needs and appetites engendered by prosperity take on a more social character, and are sharpened by social rivalries. In place of the earlier easy and reckless gratification of animal impulses, a peaceful and organized struggle is established for securing in ever fuller degree the gratification of increasingly insistent and increasingly complex desires. Such a struggle involves a deliberate calculation and forethought, which, sooner or later, cannot fail to be applied to the question of offspring. Thus it is that affluence, in the long run, itself imposes a check on reproduction. Prosperity, under the stress of the urban conditions with which it tends to be associated, has been transformed into that calculated forethought, that deliberate self-restraint for the attainment of ever more manifold ends, which in its outcome we term "civilization."

It is frequently assumed, as we have seen, that the process by which civilization is thus evolved is a selfish and immoral process. To procreate large families, it is said, is unselfish and moral, as well as a patriotic, even a religious duty. This assumption, we now find, is a little too hasty and is even the reverse of the truth; it is necessary to take into consideration the totality of the social phenomena accompanying a high birth-rate, more especially under the conditions of town life. A community in which children are born rapidly is necessarily in an unstable position; it is growing so quickly that there is insufficient time for the conditions of life to be equalized. The state of ill-adjustment is chronic; the pressure is lifted from off the natural impulse of procreation, but is increased on all the conditions under which the impulse is exerted. There is increased overcrowding, increased filth, increased disease, increased death. It can never happen, in modern times, that the readjustment of the conditions of life can be made to keep pace with a high birth-rate. It is sufficient if we consider the case of English towns, of London in particular, during the period when British prosperity was most rapidly increasing, and the birth-rate nearing its maximum, in the middle of the great Victorian epoch, of which Englishmen are, for many reasons, so proud. It was certainly not an age lacking in either energy or philanthropy; yet, when we read the memorable report which Chadwick wrote in 1842, on the Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Population of Great Britain, or the minute study of Bethnal Green which Gavin published in 1848 as a type of the conditions prevailing in English towns, we realize that the magnificence of this epoch was built up over circles of Hell to which the imagination of Dante never attained.

As reproductive activity dies down, social conditions become more stable, a comparatively balanced state of adjustment tends to be established, insanitary surroundings can be bettered, disease diminished, and the death-rate lowered. How much may thus be accomplished we realize when we compare the admirably precise and balanced pages in which Charles Booth, in the concluding volumes of his great work, has summarized his survey of London, with the picture presented by Chadwick and Gavin half a century earlier. Ugly and painful as are many of the features of this modern London, the vision which is, on the whole, evoked is that of a community which has attained self-consciousness, which is growing into some faint degree of harmony with its environment, and is seeking to gain the full amount of the satisfaction which an organized urban life can yield. Booth, who appears to have realized the significance of a decreased fertility in the attainment of this progress, hopes for a still greater fall in the birth-rate; and those who seek to restore the birth-rate of half a century ago are engaged on a task which would be criminal if it were not based on ignorance, and which is, in any case, fatuous.

The whole course of zoological evolution reveals a constantly diminishing reproductive activity and a constantly increasing expenditure of care on the offspring thus diminished in number.[141] Fish spawn their ova by the million, and it is a happy chance if they become fertilized, a highly unlikely chance that more than a very small proportion will ever attain maturity. Among the mammals, however, the female may produce but half a dozen or fewer offspring at a time, but she lavishes so much care upon them that they have a very fair chance of all reaching maturity. In man, in so far as he refrains from returning to the beast and is true to the impulse which in him becomes a conscious process of civilization, the same movement is carried forward. He even seeks to decrease still further the number of his offspring by voluntary effort, and at the same time to increase their quality and magnify their importance.[142]

When in human families, especially under civilized conditions, we see large families we are in the presence of a reversion to the tendencies that prevail among lower organisms. Such large families may probably be regarded, as Naecke suggests, as constituting a symptom of degeneration. It is noteworthy that they usually occur in the pathological and abnormal classes, among the insane, the feeble-minded, the criminal, the consumptive, the alcoholic, etc.[143]

This tendency of the birth-rate to fall with the growth of social stability is thus a tendency which is of the very essence of civilization. It represents an impulse which, however deliberate it may be in the individual, may, in the community, be looked upon as an instinctive effort to gain more complete control of the conditions of life, and to grapple more efficiently with the problems of misery and disease and death. It is not only, as is sometimes supposed, during the past century that the phenomena may be studied. We have a remarkable example some centuries earlier, an example which very clearly illustrates the real nature of the phenomena. The city of Geneva, perhaps first of European cities, began to register its births, deaths, and marriages from the middle of the sixteenth century. This alone indicates a high degree of civilization; and at that time, and for some succeeding centuries, Geneva was undoubtedly a very highly civilized city. Its inhabitants really were the "elect," morally and intellectually, of French Protestantism. In many respects it was a model city, as Gray noted when he reached it in the course of his travels in the middle of the eighteenth century. These registers of Geneva show, in a most illuminating manner, how extreme fertility at the outset, gradually gave place, as civilization progressed, to a very low fertility, with fewer and later marriages, a very low death-rate, and a state of general well-being in which the births barely replaced the deaths.

After Protestant Geneva had lost her pioneering place in civilization, it was in France, the land which above all others may in modern times claim to represent the social aspects of civilization, that the same tendency most conspicuously appeared. But all Europe, as well as all the English-speaking lands outside Europe, is now following the lead of France. In a paper read before the Paris Society of Anthropology a few years ago, Emile Macquart showed clearly, by a series of ingenious diagrams, that whereas, fifty years ago, the condition of the birth-rate in France diverged widely from that prevailing in the other chief countries of Europe, the other countries are now rapidly following in the same road along which France has for a century been proceeding slowly, and are constantly coming closer to her, England closest of all. In the past, proposals have from time to time been made in France to interfere with the progress of this downward movement of the birth-rate—proposals that were sufficiently foolish, for neither in France nor elsewhere will the individual allow the statistician to interfere officiously in a matter which he regards as purely intimate and private. But the real character of this tendency of the birth-rate, as an essential phenomenon of civilization, with which neither moralist nor politician can successfully hope to interfere, is beginning to be realized in France. Azoulay, in summing up the discussion after Macquart's paper[144] had been read at the Society of Anthropology, pointed out that "nations must inevitably follow the same course as social classes, and the more the mass of these social classes becomes civilized, the more the nation's birth-rate falls; therefore there is nothing to be done legally and administratively." And another member added: "Except to applaud."

It is probably too much to hope that so sagacious a view will at once be universally adopted. The United States and the great English colonies, for instance, find it difficult to realize that they are not really new countries, but branches of old countries, and already nearing maturity when they began their separate lives. They are not at the beginning of two thousand years of slow development, such as we have passed through, but at the end of it, with us, and sometimes even a little ahead of us. It is therefore natural and inevitable that, in a matter in which we are moving rapidly, Massachusetts and Ontario and New South Wales and New Zealand should have moved still more rapidly, so rapidly indeed, that they have themselves failed to perceive that their real natural increase and the manner in which it is attained place them in this matter at the van of civilization. These things are, however, only learnt slowly. We may be sure that the fundamental and complex character of the phenomena will never be obvious to our fussy little politicians, so apt to advocate panaceas which have effects quite opposite to those they desire. But, whatever politicians may wish to do or to leave undone, it is well to remember that, of the various ideals the world holds, there are some that lie on the path of our social progress, and others that do not there lie. We may properly exercise such wisdom as we possess by utilizing the ideals which are before us, serenely neglecting many others which however precious they may once have seemed, no longer form part of the stage of civilization we are now moving towards.

IV

What are the ideals of the stage of civilization we of the Western world are now moving towards? We have here pushed as far as need be the analysis of that declining birth-rate which has caused so much anxiety to those amongst us who can only see narrowly and see superficially. We have found that, properly understood, there is nothing in it to evoke our pessimism. On the contrary, we have seen that, in the opinion of the most distinguished authorities, the energy with which we move in our present direction, through the exercise of an ever finer economy in life, may be regarded as a "measure of civilization" in the important sphere of vital statistics. As we now leave the question, some may ask themselves whether this concomitant decline in birth-rates and death-rates may not possibly have a still wider and more fundamental meaning as a measure of civilization.

We have long been accustomed to regard the East as a spiritual world in which the finer ends of living were counted supreme, and the merely materialistic aspects of life, dissociated from the aims of religion and of art, were trodden under foot. Our own Western world we have humbly regarded as mainly absorbed in a feverish race for the attainment, by industry and war, of the satisfaction of the impulses of reproduction and nutrition, and the crudely material aggrandizement of which those impulses are the symbol. A certain outward idleness, a semi-idleness, as Nietzsche said, is the necessary condition for a real religious life, for a real aesthetic life, for any life on the spiritual plane. The noisy, laborious, pushing, "progressive" life we traditionally associate with the West is essentially alien to the higher ends of living, as has been intuitively recognized and acted on by all those among us who have sought to pursue the higher ends of living. It was so that the nineteenth-century philosophers of Europe, of whom Schopenhauer was in this matter the extreme type, viewed the matter. But when we seek to measure the tendency of the chief countries of the West, led by France, England, and Germany, and the countries of the East led by Japan, in the light of this strictly measurable test of vital statistics, may we not, perhaps, trace the approach of a revolutionary transposition? Japan, entering on the road we have nearly passed through, in which the perpetual clash of a high birth-rate and a high death-rate involves social disorder and misery, has flung to the winds the loftier ideals it once pursued so successfully and has lost its fine aesthetic perceptions, its insight into the most delicate secrets of the soul.[145] And while Japan, certainly to-day voicing the aspirations of the East, is concerned to become a great military and industrial power, we in the West are growing weary of war, and are coming to look upon commerce as a necessary routine no longer adequate to satisfy the best energies of human beings. We are here moving towards the fine quiescence involved by a delicate equipoise of life and of death; and this economy sets free an energy we are seeking to expend in a juster social organization, and in the realization of ideals which until now have seemed but the imagination of idle dreamers. Asia, as an anonymous writer has recently put it, is growing crude, vulgar, and materialistic; Europe, on the other hand, is growing to loathe its own past grossness. "London may yet be the spiritual capital of the world, while Asia—rich in all that gold can buy and guns can give, lord of lands and bodies, builder of railways and promulgator of police regulations, glorious in all material glories—postures, complacent and obtuse, before a Europe content in the possession of all that matters,"[146] Certainly, we are not there yet, but the old Earth has seen many stranger and more revolutionary changes than this. England, as this writer reminds us, was once a tropical forest.

FOOTNOTES:

[90] It must be understood that, from the present point of view, the term "Anglo-Saxon" covers the peoples of Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, as well as of England.

[91] The decline of the French birth-rate has been investigated in a Lyons thesis by Salvat, La Depopulation de la France, 1903.

[92] The latest figures are given in the Annual Reports of the Registrar-General for England and Wales.

[93] Newsholme and Stevenson, "Decline of Human Fertility as shown by corrected Birth-rates," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, 1906.

[94] Werner Sombart, International Magazine, December, 1907.

[95] A.W. Flux, "Urban Vital Statistics in England and Germany," Journ. Statist. Soc., March, 1910.

[96] German infantile mortality, Boehmert states ("Die Saeuglingssterblichkeit in Deutschland und ihre Ursachen," Die Neue Generation, March, 1908), is greater than in any European country, except Russia and Hungary, about 50 per cent greater than in England, France, Belgium, or Holland. The infantile mortality has increased in Germany, as usually happens, with the increased employment of women, and, largely from this cause, has nearly doubled in Berlin in the course of four years, states Lily Braun (Mutterschutz, 1906, Heft I, p. 21); but even on this basis it is only 22 per cent in the English textile industries, as against 38 per cent in the German textile industries.

[97] In England the marriage-rate fell rather sharply in 1875, and showed a slight tendency to rise about 1900 (G. Udny Yule, "On the Changes in the Marriage-and Birth-rates in England and Wales," Journal of the Statistical Society, March, 1906). On the whole there has been a real though slight decline. The decline has been widespread, and is most marked in Australia, especially South Australia. There has, however, been a rise in the marriage-rate in Ireland, France, Austria, Switzerland, Germany, and especially Belgium. The movement for decreased child-production would naturally in the first place involve decreased marriage, but it is easy to understand that when it is realized the marriage is not necessarily followed by conception this motive for avoiding marriage loses its force, and the marriage-rate rises.

[98] Medicine, February, 1904.

[99] Davidson, "The Growth of the French-Canadian Race," Annals of the American Academy, September, 1896.

[100] T.A. Coghlan, The Decline of the Birth-rate of New South Wales, 1903. The New South Wales statistics are specially valuable as the records contain many particulars (such as age of parents, period since marriage, and number of children) not given in English or most other records.

[101] C. Hamburger, "Kinderzahl und Kindersterblichkeit," Die Neue Generation, August, 1909.

[102] Looked at in another way, it may be said that if a natural increase, as ascertained by subtracting the death-rate from the birth-rate, of 10 to 15 per cent be regarded as normal, then, taking so far as possible the figures for 1909, the natural increase of England and Scotland, of Germany, of Italy, of Austria and Hungary, of Belgium, is normal; the natural increase of New South Wales, of Victoria, of South Australia, of New Zealand, is abnormally high (though in new countries such increase may not be undesirable) while the natural increase of France, of Spain, and of Ireland is abnormally low. Such a method of estimation, of course, entirely leaves out of account the question of the social desirability of the process by which the normal increase is secured.

[103] Johannsen, Janus, 1905.

[104] Rubin, "A Measure of Civilization," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, March, 1897. "The lowest stage of civilization," he points out, "is to go forward blindly, which in this connection means to bring into the world a great number of children which must, in great proportion, sink into the grave. The next stage of civilization is to see the danger and to keep clear of it. The highest stage of civilization is to see the danger and overcome it." Europe in the past and various countries in the present illustrate the first stage; France illustrates the second stage; the third stage is that towards which we are striving to move to-day.

[105] Baines, "The Recent Growth of Population in Western Europe," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, December, 1909.

[106] Various facts and references are given by Havelock Ellis, The Nationalization of Health, chap. XIV.

[107] These are the figures given by the chief Japanese authority, Professor Takano, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, July, 1910, p. 738.

[108] E.A. Ross, "The Race Fibre of the Chinese," Popular Science Monthly, October, 1911. According to another competent and fairly concordant estimate, the infantile death-rate of China is 90 per cent. Of the female infants, probably about 1 in 10 is intentionally destroyed.

[109] J.J. Matignon, "La Mere et l'Enfant en Chine," Archives d'Anthropologie Criminelle, October to November, 1909.

[110] Arsene Dumont, for instance, points out (Depopulation et Civilization, p. 116) that the very early marriages and the reckless fertility of the Chinese cannot fail to cease as soon as the people adopt European ways.

[111] The confident estimates of the future population of the world which are from time to time put forward on the basis of the present birth-rate are quite worthless. A brilliantly insubstantial fabric of this kind, by B.L. Putnam Weale (The Conflict of Colour, 1911), has been justly criticized by Professor Weatherley (Popular Science Monthly, November, 1911).

[112] It is sometimes convenient to use the term "Neo-Malthusianism" to indicate the voluntary limitation of the family, but it must always be remembered that Malthus would not have approved of Neo-Malthusianism, and that Neo-Malthusian practices have nothing to do with the theory of Malthus. They would not be affected could that theory be conclusively proved or conclusively disproved.

[113] We even find the demand that bachelors and spinsters shall be taxed. This proposal has been actually accepted (1911) by the Landtag of the little Principality of Reuss, which proposes to tax bachelors and spinsters over thirty years of age. Putting aside the arguable questions as to whether a State is entitled to place such pressure on its citizens, it must be pointed out that it is not marriage but the child which concerns the State. It is possible to have children without marriage, and marriage does not ensure the procreation of children. Therefore it would be more to the point to tax the childless. In that case, it would be necessary to remit the tax in the case of unmarried people with children, and to levy it in the case of married people without children. But it has further to be remembered that not all persons are fitted to have sound children, and as unsound children are a burden and not a benefit to the State, the State ought to reward rather than to fine those conscientious persons who refrain from procreation when they are too poor, or with too defective a heredity, to be likely to produce, or to bring up, sound children. Moreover, some persons are sterile, and thorough medical investigation would be required before they could fairly be taxed. As soon as we begin to analyse such a proposal we cannot fail to see that, even granting that the aim of such legislation is legitimate and desirable, the method of attaining it is thoroughly mischievous and unjustifiable.

[114] J.G. Engelmann, "Decreasing Fecundity," Philadelphia Medical Journal, January 18, 1902.

[115] It has, further, been frequently denied that Neo-Malthusian practices can affect Roman Catholic countries, since the Church is precluded from approving of them. That is true. But it is also true that, as Lagneau long since pointed out, the Protestants of Europe have increased at more than double the annual rate of the Catholics, though this relationship has now ceased to be exact. Dumont states (Depopulation et Civilisation, chap. XVIII) that there is not the slightest reason to suppose that (apart from the question of poverty) the faithful have more children than the irreligious; moreover, in dealing with its more educated members, it is not the policy of the Church to make indiscreet inquiries (see Havelock Ellis, Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Vol. VI, "Sex in Relation to Society," p. 590). A Catholic bishop is reported to have warned his clergy against referring in their Lent sermons to the voluntary restriction of conception, remarking that an excess of rigour in this matter would cause the Church to lose half her flock. The fall in the birth-rate is as marked in Catholic as in Protestant countries; the Catholic communities in which this is not the case are few, and placed in exceptional circumstances. It must be remembered, moreover, that the Church enjoins celibacy on its clergy, and that celibacy is practically a Malthusian method. It is not easy while preaching practical Malthusianism to the clergy to spend much fervour in preaching against practical Neo-Malthusianism to the laity.

[116] McLean, "The Declining Birth-rate in Australia," International Medical Journal of Australasia, 1904.

[117] Thus in France the low birth-rate is associated with a high infantile death-rate, which has not yet been appreciably influenced by the movement of puericulture in France. In England also, at the end of the last century, the declining birth-rate was accompanied by a rising infantile death-rate, which is now, however, declining under the influence of greater care of child-life.

[118] Sidney Webb, Times, October 11 and 16, 1906; also Popular Science Monthly, 1906, p. 526.

[119] It is important to remember the distinction between "fecundity" and "fertility." A woman who has one child has proved that she is fecund, but has not proved that she is fertile. A woman with six children has proved that she is not only fecund but fertile.

[120] They have been worked out by C.J. Lewis and J. Norman Lewis, Natality and Fecundity, 1905.

[121] Newsholme and Stevenson, op. cit.; Rubin and Westergaard, Statistik der Ehen, 1890, p. 95.

[122] D. Heron, "On the Relation of Fertility in Man to Social Status," Drapers' Company Research Memoirs, No. 1, 1906.

[123] The recognition of this relationship must not be regarded as an attempt unduly to narrow down the causation of changes in the birth-rate. The great complexity of the causes influencing the birth-rate is now fairly well recognized, and has, for instance, been pointed out by Goldscheid, Hoeherentwicklung und Menschenoekonomie, Vol. I, 1911.

[124] In a paper read at the Brunswick Meeting of the German Anthropological Society (Correspondenzblatt of the Society, November, 1898); a great many facts concerning the fecundity of women among savages in various parts of the world are brought together by Ploss and Bartels, Das Weib, Vol I, chap. XXIV.

[125] The proportion of doctors to the population is very small, and the people still have great confidence in their quacks and witch-doctors. The elementary rules of sanitation are generally neglected, water supplies are polluted, filth is piled up in the streets and the courtyards, as it was in England and Western Europe generally until a century ago, and the framing of regulations or the incursions of the police have little effect on the habits of the people. Neglect of the ordinary precautions of cleanliness is responsible for the wide extension of syphilis by the use of drinking vessels, towels, etc., in common. Not only is typhoid prevalent in nearly every province of Russia, but typhus, which is peculiarly the disease of filth, overcrowding, and starvation, and has long been practically extinct in England, still flourishes and causes an immense mortality. The workers often have no homes and sleep in the factories amidst the machinery, men and women together; their food is insufficient, and the hours of labour may vary from twelve to fourteen. When famine occurs these conditions are exaggerated, and various epidemics ravage the population.

[126] It must, however, be remembered that in small and unstable communities a considerable margin for error must be allowed, as the crude birth-rate is unduly raised by an afflux of immigrants at the reproductive age.

[127] Arsene Dumont, Depopulation et Civilisation, 1890, chap. VI. The nature of the restraint on fertility has been well set forth by Dr. Bushee ("The Declining Birth-rate and its Causes," Popular Science Monthly, August, 1903), mainly in the terms of Dumont's "social capillarity" theory.

[128] Even Dr. Newsholme, usually so cautious and reliable an investigator in this field, has been betrayed into a reference in this connection (The Declining Birth-rate, 1911, p. 41) to the "increasing rarity of altruism," though in almost the next paragraph he points out that the large families of the past were connected with the fact that the child was a profitable asset, and could be sent to work when little more than an infant. The "altruism" which results in crushing the minds and bodies of others in order to increase one's own earnings is not an "altruism" which we need desire to perpetuate. The beneficial effect of legislation against child-labour in reducing an unduly high birth-rate has often been pointed out.

[129] It may suffice to take a single point. Large families involve the birth of children at very short intervals. It has been clearly shown by Dr. R.J. Ewart ("The Influence of Parental Age on Offspring," Eugenics Review, October, 1911) that children born at an interval of less than two years after the birth of the previous child, remain, even when they have reached their sixth year, three inches shorter and three pounds lighter than first-born children.

[130] For instance, Goldscheid, in Hoeherentwicklung und Menschenoekonomie; it is also, on the whole, the conclusion of Newsholme, though expressed in an exceedingly temperate manner, in his Declining Birth-rate.

[131] If, however, our birth-rate fanatics should hear of the results obtained at the experimental farm at Roseville, California, by Professor Silas Wentworth, who has found that by placing ewes in a field under the power wires of an electric wire company, the average production of lambs is more than doubled, we may anticipate trouble in many hitherto small families. Their predecessors insisted, in the cause of religion and morals, on burning witches; we must not be surprised if our modern fanatics, in the same holy cause, clamour for a law compelling all childless women to live under electric wires.

[132] J. Holt Schooling, "The English Marriage Rate," Fortnightly Review, June, 1901.

[133] G. Udny Yule, "Changes in the Marriage-and Birth-rate in England," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, March, 1906.

[134] At an earlier period Hooker had investigated the same subject without coming to any very decisive conclusions ("Correlation of the Marriage-rate with Trade," Journ. Statistical Soc., September, 1901). Minor fluctuations in marriage and in trade per head, he found, tend to be in close correspondence, but on the whole trade has risen and the marriage-rate has fallen, probably, Hooker believed, as the result of the gradual deferment of marriage.

[135] The higher standard need not be, among the mass of the population, of a very exalted character, although it marks a real progress. Newsholme and Stevenson (op. cit.) term it a higher "standard of comfort." The decline of the birth-rate, they say, "is associated with a general raising of the standard of comfort, and is an expression of the determination of the people to secure this greater comfort."

[136] Ploss, Das Weib, Vol. I, chap. XX.

[137] It must not, however, be assumed that the rural immigrants are in the mass better suited to urban life than the urban natives. It is probable that, notwithstanding their energy and robustness, the immigrants are less suited to urban conditions than the natives. Consequently a process of selection takes place among the immigrants, and the survivors become, as it were, immunized to the poisons of urban life. But this immunization is by no means necessarily associated with any high degree of nervous vigour or general physical development.

[138] Havelock Ellis, A Study of British Genius, pp. 22, 43.

[139] "National Health: a Soldier's Study," Contemporary Review, January, 1903. The Reports of the Inspector-General of Recruiting are said to show that the recruits are every year smaller, lighter, and narrower-chested.

[140] This has been well illustrated during the past forty years in the flourishing county of Glamorgan in Wales, as is shown by Dr. R.S. Stewart ("The Relationship of Wages, Lunacy, and Crime in South Wales," Journal of Mental Science, January, 1904). The staple industry here is coal, 17 per cent of the population being directly employed in coal-mining, and wages are determined by the sliding scale as it is called, according to which the selling price of coal regulates the wages. This leads to many fluctuations and sudden accesses of prosperity. It is found that whenever wages rise there is a concomitant increase of insanity and at the same time a diminished output of coal due to slacking of work when earnings are greater; there is also an increase of drunkenness and of crime. Stewart concludes that it is doubtful whether increased material prosperity is conducive to improvement in physical and mental status. It must, however, be pointed out that it is a sudden and unstable prosperity, not necessarily a gradual and stable prosperity, which is hereby shown to be pernicious.

[141] The relationship is sometimes expressed by saying that the more highly differentiated the organism the fewer the offspring. According to Plate we ought to say that, the greater the capacity for parental care the fewer the offspring. This, however, comes to the same thing, since it is the higher organisms which possess the increased capacity for parental care. Putting it in the most generalized zoological way, diminished offspring is the response to improved environment. Thus in Man the decline of the birth-rate, as Professor Benjamin Moore remarks (British Medical Journal, August 20, 1910, p. 454), is "the simple biological reply to good economic conditions. It is a well-known biological law that even a micro-organism, when placed in unfavourable conditions as to food and environment, passes into a reproductive phase, and by sporulation or some special type produces new individuals very rapidly. The same condition of affairs in the human race was shown even by the fact that one-half of the births come from the least favourably situated one-quarter of the population. Hence, over-rapid birth-rate indicates unfavourable conditions of life, so that (so long as the population was on the increase) a lower birth-rate was a valuable indication of a better social condition of affairs, and a matter on which we should congratulate the country rather than proceed to condolences."

[142] "The accumulations of racial experience tend to show," remarks Woods Hutchinson ("Animal Marriage," Contemporary Review, October, 1904), "that by the production of a smaller and smaller number of offspring, and the expenditure upon those of a greater amount of parental care, better results can be obtained in efficiency and capacity for survival."

[143] Toulouse, Causes de la Folie, p. 91; Magri, Archivio di Psichiatria, 1896, fasc. vi-vii; Havelock Ellis, A Study of British Genius, pp. 106 et seq.

[144] Emile Macquart, "Mortalite, Natalite, Depopulation," Bulletin de la Societe d'Anthropologie, 1902.

[145] It is interesting to observe how Lafcadio Hearn, during the last years of his life, was compelled, however unwillingly, to recognize this change. See e.g. his Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation, 1904, ch. XXI, on "Industrial Dangers." The Japanese themselves have recognized it, and it is the feeling of the decay of their ancient ideals which has given so great an impetus to new ethical movements, such as that, described as a kind of elevated materialism, established by Yukichi Fukuzawa (see Open Court, June, 1907).

[146] Athenaeum, October 7, 1911.



VI

EUGENICS AND LOVE

Eugenics and the Decline of the Birth-rate—Quantity and Quality in the Production of Children—Eugenic Sexual Selection—The Value of Pedigrees—Their Scientific Significance—The Systematic Record of Personal Data—The Proposal for Eugenic Certificates—St. Valentine's Day and Sexual Selection—Love and Reason—Love Ruled by Natural Law—Eugenic Selection not opposed to Love—No Need for Legal Compulsion—Medicine in Relation to Marriage

I

During recent years the question of the future of the human race has been brought before us in a way it has never been brought before. The great expansive movement in civilized countries is over. Whereas, fifty years ago, France seemed to present a striking contrast to other countries in her low and gradually falling birth-rate, to-day, though she has herself now almost reached a stationary position, France is seen merely to have been the leader in a movement which is common to all the more highly civilized nations. They are all now moving rapidly in the direction in which she moved slowly. It was inevitable that this movement, world-wide as it is, should call forth energetic protests, for there is no condition of things so bad but it finds some to advocate its perpetuation. There has, therefore, been much vigorous preaching against "race suicide" by people who were deaf to the small voice of reason, who failed to understand that this matter could not be settled by mere consideration of the crude birth-rates, and that, even if it could, we should have still to realize that, as an economist remarks, it is to the decline of the birth-rate only that we probably owe it that the modern civilized world has been saved from economic disaster.[147]

But whatever the causes of the declining birth-rate it is certain that even when they are within our control they are of far too intimate a character for the public moralist to be permitted to touch them, even though we consider them to be in a disastrous state. It has to be recognized that we are here in the presence, not of a merely local or temporary tendency which might be shaken off with an effort, but of a great fundamental law of civilization; and the fact that we encounter it in our own race merely means that we are reaching a fairly high stage of civilization. It is far from the first time, in the history of the world, that the same phenomenon has been witnessed. It was seen in Imperial Rome; it was seen, again, in the "Protestant Rome," Geneva. Wherever are gathered together an exceedingly fine race of people, the flower of the race, individuals of the highest mental and moral distinction, there the birth-rate falls steadily. Vice or virtue alike avails nothing in this field; with high civilization fertility inevitably diminishes.

II

Under these circumstances it was to be expected that a new ideal should begin to flash before men's eyes. If the ideal of quantity is lost to us, why not seek the ideal of quality? We know that the old rule: "Increase and multiply" meant a vast amount of infant mortality, of starvation, of chronic disease, of widespread misery. In abandoning that rule, as we have been forced to do, are we not left free to seek that our children, though few, should be at all events fit, the finest, alike in physical and psychical constitution, that the world has seen?

Thus has come about the recent expansion of that conception of Eugenics, or the science and art of Good Breeding in the human race, which a group of workers, pioneered by Francis Galton[148]—at first in England and later in America, Germany and elsewhere—have been developing for some years past. Eugenics is beginning to be felt to possess a living actuality which it failed to possess before. Instead of being a benevolent scientific fad it begins to present itself as the goal to which we are inevitably moving.

The cause of Eugenics has sometimes been prejudiced in the public mind by a comparison with the artificial breeding of domestic animals. In reality the two things are altogether different. In breeding animals a higher race of beings manipulates a lower race with the object of securing definite points that are of no use whatever to the animals themselves, but of considerable value to the breeders. In our own race, on the other hand, the problem of breeding is presented in an entirely different shape. There is as yet no race of super-men who are prepared to breed man for their own special ends. As things are, even if we had the ability and the power, we should surely hesitate before we bred men and women as we breed dogs or fowls. We may, therefore, quite put aside all discussion of eugenics as a sort of higher cattle-breeding. It would be undesirable, even if it were not impracticable.

But there is another aspect of Eugenics. Human eugenics need not be, and is not likely to be, a cold-blooded selection of partners by some outside scientific authority. But it may be, and is very likely to be, a slowly growing conviction—first among the more intelligent members of the community and then by imitation and fashion among the less intelligent members—that our children, the future race, the torch-bearers of civilization for succeeding ages, are not the mere result of chance or Providence, but that, in a very real sense, it is within our power to mould them, that the salvation or damnation of many future generations lies in our hands since it depends on our wise and sane choice of a mate. The results of the breeding of those persons who ought never to be parents is well known; the notorious case of the Jukes family is but one among many instances. We could scarcely expect in any community that individuals like the Jukes would take the initiative in movements for the eugenic development of the race, but it makes much difference whether such families exist in an environment like our own which is indifferent to the future of the race, or whether they are surrounded by influences of a more wholesome character which can scarcely fail to some extent to affect, and even to control, the reckless and anti-social elements in the community.

In considering this question, therefore, we are justified in putting aside not only any kind of human breeding resembling the artificial breeding of animals, but also, at all events for the present, every compulsory prohibition on marriage or procreation. We must be content to concern ourselves with ideals, and with the endeavour to exert our personal influence in the realization of these ideals.

III

Such ideals cannot, however, be left in the air; if they depend on individual caprice nothing but fruitless confusion can come of them. They must be firmly grounded on a scientific basis of ascertained fact. This was always emphasized by Galton. He not only initiated schemes for obtaining, but actually to some extent obtained, a large amount of scientific knowledge concerning the special characteristics and aptitudes of families, and his efforts in this direction have since been largely extended and elaborated.[149] The feverish activities of modern life, and the constant vicissitudes and accidents that overtake families to-day, have led to an extraordinary indifference to family history and tradition. Our forefathers, from generation to generation, carefully entered births, baptisms, marriages, and deaths in the fly-leaf of the Family Bible. It is largely owing to these precious entries that many are able to carry their family history several centuries further back than they otherwise could. But nowadays the Family Bible has for the most part ceased to exist, and nothing else has taken its place. If a man wishes to know what sort of stocks he has come from, unless he is himself an antiquarian, or in a position to employ an antiquarian to assist him, he can learn little, and in the most favourable position he is helpless without clues; though with such clues he might often learn much that would be of the greatest interest to him. The entries in the Family Bible, however, whatever their value as clues and even as actual data, do not furnish adequate information to serve as a guide to the different qualities of stocks; we need far more detailed and varied information in order to realize the respective values of families from the point of view of eugenics. Here, again, Galton had already realized the need for supplying a great defect in our knowledge, and his Life-history Albums showed how the necessary information may be conveniently registered.

The accumulated histories of individual families, it is evident, will in time furnish a foundation on which to base scientific generalizations, and eventually, perhaps, to justify practical action. Moreover, a vast amount of valuable information on which it is possible to build up a knowledge of the correlated characteristics of families, already lies at present unused in the great insurance offices and elsewhere. When it is possible to obtain a large collection of accurate pedigrees for scientific purposes, and to throw them into a properly tabulated form, we shall certainly be in a position to know more of the qualities of stocks, of their good and bad characteristics, and of the degree in which they are correlated.[150]

In this way we shall, in time, be able to obtain a clear picture of the probable results on the offspring of unions between any kind of people. From personal and ancestral data we shall be able to reckon the probable quality of the offspring of a married couple. Given a man and woman of known personal qualities and of known ancestors, what are likely to be the personal qualities, physical, mental and moral, of the children? That is a question of immense importance both for the beings themselves whom we bring into the world, for the community generally, and for the future race.

Eventually, it seems evident, a general system, whether private or public, whereby all personal facts, biological and mental, normal and morbid, are duly and systematically registered, must become inevitable if we are to have a real guide as to those persons who are most fit, or most unfit, to carry on the race.[151] Unless they are full and frank such records are useless. But it is obvious that for a long time to come such a system of registration must be private. According to the belief which is still deeply rooted in most of us, we regard as most private those facts of our lives which are most intimately connected with the life of the race, and most fateful for the future of humanity. The feeling is no doubt inevitable; it has a certain rightness and justification. As, however, our knowledge increases we shall learn that we are, on the one hand, a little more responsible for future generations than we are accustomed to think, and, on the other hand, a little less responsible for our own good or bad qualities. Our fiat makes the future man, but, in the same way, we are ourselves made by a choice and a will not our own. A man may indeed, within limits, mould himself, but the materials he can alone use were handed on to him by his parents, and whether he becomes a man of genius, a criminal, a drunkard, an epileptic, or an ordinarily healthy, well-conducted, and intelligent citizen, must depend at least as much on his parents as on his own effort or lack of effort, since even the aptitude for effective effort is largely inborn. As we learn to look on the facts from the only sound standpoint of heredity, our anger or contempt for a failing and erring individual has to give way to the kindly but firm control of a weakling. If the children's teeth have been set on edge it is because the parents have eaten sour grapes.