THE FUTURE 189 



M. Muret to the effect that the number of childless married 

 women at Vevay, Switzerland, at the end of the eighteenth 

 century was only 20 out of 478, or little more than 

 4 per cent. 1 If we find that there is a proportionate rise 

 in the percentage of completely sterile marriages in other 

 comparisons, we are bound to conclude, unless we are 

 prepared to accept the grotesque caricature of the " demo- 

 graphic woman, " that there has been a vast decline of 

 natural fertility ; and if this is particularly marked among 

 the intellectual classes, it will be a fair inference that 

 the great spread of education and cerebral activity has 

 been a powerful contributing cause. These factors appear 

 to produce a state of nervous tension which is inimical 

 to fertility. 



Many most promising lines of inquiry and experiment 

 are opened up by the hypotheses and generalisations 

 herein sketched out. And it is only by the systematic 

 following up of these inquiries that the problem of the 

 birthrate can be successfully grappled with. Eloquent 

 exhortations and denunciations are alike useless. Only 

 an accurate understanding of the problem will enable 

 us to deal with it. And this understanding will have 

 to include a solution of the economic problems involved. 

 So long as Society is run upon the principle of every man 

 for himself and the devil take the hindmost, so long will 

 this principle manifest itself in the problem of the birthrate. 

 Whether the decline be due to contraceptives or to natural 

 causes, it will be equally useless to exhort the abler sections 

 of the community to produce a number of children adequate 

 to maintain the numbers of the population unless there 

 is some economic guarantee that they shall not be hope- 

 lessly penalised in the race thereby, and if they should 

 break down in the struggle be left to starve in the gutter. 

 The Principle of Population, Book II, chap. v. 



