194 evolution: the ages and tomorrow 



and keep under control the enslaved Messenians. The whole 

 Spartan society was "bound in misery" and was never again 

 able to relax. The arts declined, and the life of the individual 

 became a bleak span of long military training and dull 

 existence in barracks. They led the "Spartan life." War and 

 seizing the land and person of a neighbor was not in this 

 case a good solution to the problem of overpopulation; and 

 it is still doubtful if war ever has been a solution, in spite of 

 the many times that conquest has been the temporary "way 

 out" taken by an expanding people. 



When the population problem became acute, the states- 

 men of Athens responded much more intelligently and 

 averted a social revolution by gradually carrying through 

 an economic and political revolution. Athens specialized 

 her agricultural production and created new manufactured 

 products for both domestic and export trade. The political 

 institutions were remodeled to fit this situation in order 

 to give the new productive classes a share in the economy 

 and the government. This intensification of activity and 

 relative efficiency of food production staved off the catas- 

 trophe of starvation and incidently opened up a new avenue 

 of advance for the Hellenic peoples. Arts and philosophy 

 flourished in Athens. 



Of these three ways of responding to the problem of 

 population the first, colonization, has hitherto been the nor- 

 mal and most common one. Man simply ran away from the 

 crowded areas; and at last in less than 6,000 years he has 

 peopled nearly all possible places on the earth to near satura- 

 tion. He has practically nowhere to run to now. The second 

 method, war and conquest, is still with us but is now less 

 likely than ever to produce a temporary solution. The third, 

 the organization of better and more thorough food and 

 manufacturing production, is still the hope of some who are 

 aware of the problem and who do not want to use a fourth 

 method, which is simply to reduce man's reproduction to 

 levels below the overpopulation point. Populations, how- 



