RACE SUICIDE OR A NATURAL LAW? 81 



and that sixteen out of the forty-one whom I was able 

 to look up are childless ! 1 



Of course, a good deal of cheap cynicism might be 

 indulged in over the fact that over one-third of them 

 are without children, and that they brought in a verdict 

 that there is no evidence of a decline of fertility due to 

 natural causes ; but my own explanation of the case 

 is that it is just because they were conscious, in each 

 individual case, that their childlessness was the result 

 of natural causes that they consented to sit on the com- 

 mission. In truth, the cynical attitude which many 

 people mistake for a knowledge of human nature really 

 represents a profound ignorance of human nature. Had 

 infertility in this case been due to anything but natural 

 causes, they would have avoided that Commission. A 

 curiously similar instance is provided by the case of the 

 Emperor Augustus. He only obtained one child from a 

 sequence of three wives himself, yet all his measures to 

 combat the declining birthrate of Rome were based on 

 the assumption that there was no decline of natural 

 fertility. It may be added that a footnote to Gibbon 

 mentions that the marriages of the Emperors were usually 

 infertile. 



Statistics show that there are as many as 25 per cent, 

 of completely infertile marriages among sections of the 

 native-born population of the United States, and this 

 appears to be the rule among those people who combine 

 considerable means with considerable intellectual activity. 

 Why intellectual activity and infertility should go together 

 will be explained later, but now we may inquire whether 

 these childless people desire children or not. The develop- 

 ment of the birthrate problem has seen the invention 



1 According to the figures given in Who's Who, not necessarily accurate 

 to a decimal point, but probably not far out. 



