POPULATION PROBLEMS 215 



the unreliable — ^tend to be the most prolific. The more 

 desirable— the thrifty, the educated, the controlled, 

 those who care — tend to be the least prolific. This is 

 very serious, for social progress depends on a steady 

 increase in the proportion of the more fit to the less fit, 

 and the differential decline in the birth-rate seems work- 

 ing in the wrong direction. (We shall leave out the 

 special case of nationalities with a very heterogeneous 

 population — e.g. America with the Negroes, South 

 Africa with the Kaffirs — and keep to the case of the 

 higher birth-rate among the less desirable members of 

 a society.) 



The following considerations should be borne in 

 mind : — (a) There is a high death-rate among the 

 thriftless, which counteracts in some measure their 

 high birth-rate. But society will, of course, continue 

 to try to lessen the high death-rate, (b) It is absurd 

 to talk as if all people were equally endowed, but it is 

 also absurd to talk as if the desirable and the undesirable 

 could be distinguished at a glance. Many people who 

 have lost grip and heart were made, not born, undesir- 

 able, and there is more wrong with their purse than with 

 their germ-plasm. We do not really know to ivhat degree 

 the differences between the people of Shoreditch with 

 a high birth-rate and the people of Highgate with a low 

 birth-rate are extrinsic (modificational) or intrinsic 

 (variational). It is certain that the production of the 

 fit and of the remarkably able is not a monopoly of 

 any class. It takes a lot of different kinds of men and 

 women to make a world and to keep it a-going, (c) It 



