596 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



French. Equally important, however, is it to consider the relative 

 destruction which is annually being waged. If, as is asserted, these 

 prolific Teutons are pre-eminently a city type, and if thereby they 

 lay themselves open to decimation, the future balance of power in 

 Europe may not be so completely disturbed after all. 



These various social phenomena have been most ably correlated 

 in a rather suggestive broad-line sketch of a mode of social selection 

 given by Hansen.* Basing his hypothesis upon data derived in the 

 main from the cities of Germany, he distinguishes in any given 

 population what he designates as three degrees of vital and psychic 

 capacity respectively. The vitality is measured in each class by 

 the ratio of the birth to the death rate. The first vitality rank con- 

 sists of the well-to-do country people, leading a tranquil existence, 

 healthy in mind and body, free alike from dread or aspiration. 

 This class increases rapidly by birth, and loses relatively few by 

 premature mortality. It has enough and to spare in numbers. Both 

 country and city alike depend upon it for future growth. Below 

 this is a second vitality rank, composed of the middle classes in the 

 towns. Herein we find a somewhat lower birth rate ; ambition and 

 possibility of social advancement become effective in limiting the 

 size of families. Coincident with this is a low death rate, owing 

 to material comfort and a goodly intelligence. This class holds its 

 own in numbers, perhaps contributes slightly to swell the census 

 returns 'from year to year. Below this lies the third vitality rank, 

 composed of the great mass of the urban populations, the unskilled 

 labor and the poorer artisans. Here occur an abnormally high 

 birth rate, little self-restraint, and, through ignorance and poverty, 

 an inordinately high rate of mortality. This is the portion of the 

 city population continually recruited from the country or through 

 rejects from the superior classes — those, that is to say, who fail in 

 the intense competition of the upper grades of society. Measured 

 by vitality alone, it would appear that the first rank we have de- 

 scribed — the average country population — were the ideal one. Ap- 

 plying, however, the tests of intellectual capacity, Hansen discovers 

 curious cross-cleavages. Eor the country population is being con- 

 tinually drained of its best blood; those who are energetic or am- 

 bitious in the majority of cases leaving their homes to seek success 

 in the city. Thus an intellectual residuum is left on the soil, repre- 

 senting merely the average intelligence; perhaps, if near a great 

 metropolis, even falling below the normal in this respect. Those 

 in their turn who emigrate to the towns are speedily sorted by 

 inexorable fate. Some achieve success; the majority perhaps go 



* Die drei Bevolkerungsstufen. Miinchen, 1889. 



