ACQUISITION AND PRODUCTION. 367 



world, the men, hunting when not fighting, leave to the 

 women whatever production is carried on. The immediate 

 effect is that production is greatly restricted in amount. 

 The remote effect is that population is checked and the 

 strength of the society kept down, not only by deficiency 

 of produce but also by infertility ; for the power of women 

 to produce children is diminished if they are overburdened 

 by labours. 



A more distant evil arises. Improvements in production 

 are impeded. During early stages opposition to change is 

 extreme: the very thought of improvement does not exist. 

 And if barbarian men are conservative, barbarian women 

 are still more conservative. Down even to our own day this 

 contrast between the sexes is manifested. Hence the ab 

 straction of men from the body of producers not only di 

 rectly diminishes the quantity of products but also, by non- 

 adoption of better methods, arrests increase of quantity 

 while stopping the bettering of quality. 



Nor is improvement retarded in this way alone. In pro 

 portion as the militancy of a society is pronounced, the con 

 tempt felt for all occupations other than war is great. Pro 

 duction is left to the lowest intelligences, and the higher 

 intelligences cannot help them save under penalty of dis 

 grace. Even the acquisition and diffusion of such knowl 

 edge as serves for the better guidance of industry, is con 

 tinually checked by the scorn which the fighters pour upon 

 the thinkers and teachers. 



Looking at the facts in the broad, and dividing the social 

 organism into the sustaining part and the expending part, 

 of which last the fighting body is the chief component, we 

 may say that this last, living on the first, continually re 

 strains its growth, and occasionally, by the excessive de 

 mands it makes, causes dwindling and decay. 



740. The progress of industrial activity is thus in sev 

 eral ways dependent on the decline of militant activity. 



