276 PROBLEMS OF HUMAN EVOLUTION 



parents have fed him during infancy and, going further back, on 

 the conditions under which he developed before birth. Equality 

 of opportunity, then, must obviously come, if ever it does come, 

 as part of a thorough-going socialistic system, which must 

 equalise the circumstances of the parents no less than those 

 of the children. Such a system is utterly chimerical. But 

 there may be some approximation to it and, therefore, it is 

 important to point out its pernicious nature. It is a truism 

 that socialism tends to destroy the stimulus to exertion and so 

 stops human progress. On this point there is no need to dwell. 

 To see its consequences fully, we must recall what I have main- 

 tained above, viz., that the superabundant energy that is required, 

 especially in the leaders of the nation, must be derived ultimately 

 from the physically harder lower classes. Were it possible, 

 through a great increase in the national wealth, to make life 

 equally easy for all children, to give them all a good start in 

 life, feed them with the best of food, clothe them and house 

 them well and give them all a splendid education, then, no 

 doubt, among the myriads of competitors thus brought into the 

 field, many first-rate men would be found. But for the sake 

 of this brilliant outburst we should have done much to exhaust 

 our great reserve of potential vigour, the hardy lower stratum 

 of society, from which alone the upper stratum that is per- 

 petually tending to become used up and effete, can be regener- 

 ated. We should have made our nation like the ancient states, 

 which, based as they were on slavery, were without the fertile 

 source of renewed vigour with which the freedom of all classes 

 has endowed the modern state. 



The de- The keenness of competition and the bitterness of failure 

 dining ma k e m any men turn to socialism as a remedy. And if we 



hirth-rate . 



study the tendency or the annual birth-rate it is impossible to 

 doubt that the difficulty of over-population and the consequent 

 stress of competition is being dealt with in another way. From 

 1847 to 1876 there is an upward tendency. The figures mount 

 by slow steps with occasional slight relapses from 31-5 births 

 to looo persons living in the first year of the period to 36-3 

 in the last. After that the tendency was reversed and the rate 



