HUMAN FECUNDITY 101 



precisely is meant. In many cases it is fairly evident that it is 

 intended to imply that there is some connexion between growth 

 of civilization and decrease in fecundity. So far as this is what is 

 meant, there is no evidence for this view. There is no indication 

 whatever that increasing intellectual activity is accompanied by 

 decreasing fecundity. On the other hand, inasmuch as intellectual 

 activity is connected with an amelioration in the conditions, to 

 that degree there is a connexion between it and an increase in 

 fecundity. Such views clearly owe their origin to the attention 

 paid to the decline in the birth-rate. It is not always realized that 

 a declining birth-rate may be due to a decline in fertility alone, 

 wholly unconnected with a decline in fecundity. 



That fecundity has increased was the opinion of Darwin. 

 ' There is reason to suspect ', he says, ' that the reproductive 

 power is actually less in barbarous than in civihzed races. ... It is 

 highly probable that savages, who often suffer much hardship and 

 do not obtain so much nutritious food as civilized men, would be 

 actually less prolific' ^ According to Heape, ' it would seem 

 highly probable that the reproductive power of man has increased 

 with civihzation, precisely as it may be increased in the lower 

 animals by domestication ; that the effect of a regular supply of 

 good food, together with all the other stimulating factors available 

 and exercised in modern civihzed communities, has resulted in 

 such great activity of the generative organs, and so great an 

 increase in the supply of the reproductive elements, that conception 

 in the healthy human female may be said to be possible almost 

 at any time during the reproductive period.' ^ 



It is interesting to note that no differences in fecundity can be 

 observed as between modern civihzed races.^ The conclusion we 

 have reached is merely that there has been, broadly speaking, an 

 increase in fecundity, and that in large measure this is explicable 

 as a result of the betterment of conditions, and there is nothing 

 to lead us to expect that there would on this account be any 

 difference between modern European races. 



11. We may now pass to a brief consideration of certain habits, 

 customs, and other factors which, operative from time to time, 

 have, or are widely supposed to have, an influence upon fecundity, 



» Darwin, Descent of Man, p. 132. ^ Jjeape, loc. cit., p. 39. This is also 



the opinion of Havelock Ellis, see ' Studies in the Psychology of Sex', Analysis 

 of the. Sexual Imp^dse, p. 220. ^ Newsholme and Stevenson, J. R. 8. S., vol. \ix, 



p. 64. 



