MENTAL AND PHYSICAL RESULTS. 267 



of later age is, in the main, superior to the product of earlier life. 

 Tyler says : "If we could add even five years to the working life 

 of our statesmen, scholars and discoverers, the work of the last 

 five years with the advantages of all previously acquired knowl- 

 edge and experience might be of more value than that of their 

 whole previous lives." 1 To this I will add that if we could induce 

 the parents of each family to have one more child five years after 

 they would normally cease reproduction, the children so produced 

 might do more for the advancement of civilization and race progress 

 than all of the other children put together. 



THE CYCLE OF ACTIONS. 



It has been shown that later births cause the production of 

 greater brains and the consequent advance of civilization ; that the 

 increasing stress of civilization tends to produce sterility; and that 

 sterility acts to wipe out the race. This cycle of actions doubtless 

 was an important factor in the decay of ancient civilizations, and 

 it may be inquired if such is the inevitable result of progress. To this 

 I reply that it is not necessarily so. It has been shown that where 

 sterility actually occurs it does not occur so much among those who 

 are advanced as among those who take their places in the ranks of 

 the advanced but are not themselves advanced. The process by 

 which men and women of higher intellect are produced tends to 

 make them adapted to the circumstances which they themselves 

 create, while those not so produced are placed in an unnatural posi- 

 tion and acquire sterility in the same manner that wild animals 

 become sterile when removed from their natural haunts to the 

 society of man. The decline of Greece and Rome was not due to 

 any inability on the part of their intelligent men and women to 

 (i) The Whence and the Whither of Man, p. 215. 



