27 2 THE EVOLUTION OF SEX. 



a proposal involving some deliberate and controlled action would tend 

 to be adopted most where least wanted, namely, among the more 

 individuated types, whose numbers would in consequence be propor- 

 tionately reduced. The diminished rate of increase, which is the most 

 obvious social result of the extensive adoption of neo-Malthusian 

 practices, has long been known to the student of population; and in 

 some countries, particularly France, — although here, no doubt, to 

 some extent the result of peculiarly high individuation, — is a recog- 

 nized national danger, especially since the diminished population, in 

 being largely freed from the normal acuteness of the struggle for exis- 

 tence, loses many of the advantages of this as well. 



The statistician will doubtless long continue his fashion of confi- 

 dently estimating the importance and predicting the survival of 

 populations from their quantity and rate of reproduction alone; but at 

 all this, as naturalists we can only scoff. Even the most conventional 

 exponent of the struggle for existence among us knows, with the bar- 

 barian conquerors of old, that ' ' the thicker the grass, the easier it is 

 mown; " that " the wolf cares not how many the sheep maybe." It 

 is the most individuated type that prevails in spite, nay, in another 

 sense, positively because of its slower increase; in a word, the survival 

 of a species or family depends not primarily upon quantity, but upon 

 quality. The future is not to the most numerous populations, but to 

 the most individuated. And as we increasingly see that natural 

 history must be treated primarily from the standpoint of the species- 

 regarding sacrifice rather than from that of the individual struggle, we 

 see the importance of the general neo-Malthusian position, despite the 

 risks which the particular modes of its practice may involve. 



Apart from the pressure of population, it is time to be learning (i) 

 that the annual childbearing still so common, is cruelly exhaustive to 

 the maternal life, and this often in actual duration as well as quality; 



(2) that it is similarly injurious to the standard of offspring; and hence 



(3) that an interval of two clear years between births (some gynaecolo- 

 gists even go as far as three) is due alike to mother and offspring. It 

 is time therefore, as we heard a brave parson tell his flock lately, " to 

 have done with that blasphemous whining which constantly tries to 

 look at a motherless ' ' (ay, or sometimes even fatherless) ' ' crowd of 

 puny infants as a dispensation of mysterious providence." Let us 

 frankly face the biological facts, and admit that such cases usually 

 illustrate only the extreme organic nemesis of intemperance and 

 improvidence, and these of a kind far more reprehensible than those 

 actions to which common custom applies the names, since they are 

 species-regarding vices, and not merely self- regarding ones, as the 

 others at least primarily are. To realize the social consequences of 



