NEW CONCEPTIONS IN SCIENCE 



erally. The invidious distinctions of wealth, with 

 their attendant vulgarity and their inevitably de- 

 basing influence, will disappear. Under a rational 

 regime, men and women will satisfy their natural 

 instinct for activity and work, while they will have 

 ample time for that recreation and change which 

 alone make life agreeable or supportable. Osten- 

 tatious riches and depressing poverty, greed and 

 want, crime and prostitution, will cease to exist, 

 and with it the physical and moral maiming and 

 stunting of the children of the poor. 



This alone will permit of more of genuine prog- 

 ress in a century than in three millenniums before. 

 The general conditions of society have changed 

 but little within a long time. For the more ob- 

 vious form of chattel slavery we have substituted 

 another of practically the same effect. And now, 

 as in the antique days, the lower classes are the 

 breeders. If the propagation of the race were left 

 to the cultured and intelligent the race would die 

 out, because, in general, the cultured and intelli- 

 gent have few children, or none. With the present 

 death rate, from four to five children per family are 

 required to maintain the population. As the well- 

 to-do classes have rarely more than one, two, or 

 three, it is easy to see that the bulk is recruited 

 from below. Families which struggle up from an 

 inferior place to a higher level tend steadily to 



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