AUSTRALIAN MORALITY. 479' 



and pleasure-loving to endure the annual or biennial pangs of 

 child-birth, and that with Australian fathers and mothers the com- 

 fort and worldy advancement of themselves and their few children 

 is the primary consideration, and the welfare of the nation at large 

 a matter of small moment. 



To what extent is this true ? If, excluding the genus homo^ 

 we turn to the other members of the animal kingdom, we find that 

 " Nature red in tooth and claw " by a merciful dispensation, ac- 

 cording to some, or through callous brutality, according to others, 

 has provided that animals shall kill each other, either for food or 

 from sheer lust of slaughter. One shudders, for example, at the 

 possible condition of the sea, if the countless millions of young fish 

 were allowed to reach maturity, or of the land, if the lower animals 

 and insects were allowed to breed unchecked. Fortunately for 

 man, too, some of the more powerful and dangerous animals are, 

 comparatively speaking, unprolific. The sow once reproached the 

 lioness with having only two whelps at a birth, whereas she had over 

 a dozen. " True," rejoined the lioness, " but then, you see, my 

 offspring will be lions while yours will be only swine." The lower 

 animals prey on each other ; but man has to fear chiefly war, 

 pestilence and famine. With the increase in power and devilishness 

 of engines of destiniction, war will eventually become such an inferno 

 of horror that increasing common sense will put a stop to it. Pesti- 

 lence has lost much of its terrors, for man is acquiring the mastery of 

 disease, and the time is perhaps not very far distant when human 

 beings will die principally of old age, or by accident, or suicide. 

 The death rate is rapidly decreasing, so that the problem of the 

 world's food supply, at the present rate of natural increase in the 

 population, must sooner or later become an acute one. While, for 

 many reasons, which the limits of space forbid entering on here, the 

 problem is not so grave as Sir William Crookes would have us 

 believe, sooner or later it will have to be faced. Can we in any 

 sense, therefore, say that Nature herself is providing against too 

 rapid an increase in population by limitation of productiveness. 



Another factor which has an intimate bearing on the decline in 

 the birth rate is the great change which has come about in social 

 conditions during the last fifty years. With the spread of educa- 

 tion and the all round improvement in the lot of the people, the 

 tastes and desires of the nation have altered considerably. With 

 the growth of democracy, intellectual and social eminence are more 

 widely hungered for, and there appears to be an increasing desire 

 amongst parents to give their children a " good start in life." To 

 manage this on a comparatively small income means, in the case of 

 a large number of people, that they must necessarily restrict the 

 number of their children. Is this ambition a laudable one, or is it 

 vile and immoral ? And can anyone prove to what extent this 

 ambition is accomplished by abstention, or by mechanical inter- 

 ference with the course of nature ? Moreover, will a family of 

 three or four weU-clothed, well-fed, and well-educated children 

 prove to be better or worse citizens than a dozen ill-clothed, ill-fed 



