296 THE REGULATION OF NUMBERS 



position in Rome equally clear.^ Our knowledge of Egypt, 

 Assyria, and Babylonia is insufficient to enable any judgement 

 to be passed on conditions in these countries. 



18. Our conclusions, therefore, are broadly as follows. Within 

 the first two periods failure to approach the optimum number 

 is rare. Within the third period departures away from the 

 desirable number are less rare but are usually checked so long 

 as the tone of society remains healthy and vigorous. In an 

 oppressed society over-population not infrequently arises ; in 

 a selfish and luxurious society there may at times be under- 

 population. 



In the main, changes in numbers come about in response to 

 economic requirements. We should not therefore attribute 

 directly to changes in the quantity of population great historical 

 events. Thus we may agree with Mr. Keynes when he says that 

 * some of the catastrophes of past history, which have thrown 

 back human progress for centuries, have been due to the reactions 

 following on the sudden termination, whether in the course of 

 Nature or by the act of man, of temporarily favourable conditions 

 which have permitted the growth of population beyond what 

 could be provided for when the favourable conditions were at an 

 end '.2 But we cannot agree when he says that ' the great events 

 of history are often due to secular changes in the growth of popu- 

 lation and other fundamental economic causes, which, escaping 

 by their gradual character the notice of contemporary observers, 

 are attributed to the folhes of statesmen or the fanaticism of 

 atheists. Thus the extraordinary occurrences of the past two 

 years in Russia, that vast upheaval of Society, which has over- 

 turned what seemed most stable — religion, the basis of property, 

 the ownership of land, as well as forms of government and the 

 hierarchy of classes — may owe more to the deep influences of 

 expanding numbers than to Lenin or Nicholas ; and the dis- 

 ruptive powers of excessive national fecundity may have played 

 a greater part in bursting the bonds of convention than either 

 the power of ideas or the errors of autocracy.' ^ In the first 

 passage it is suggested that consequences of great import may 

 follow when events so derange social organization that the numbers 



* The excessive practice of infanticide in Tahiti and elsewhere in Oceania may be 

 regarded as an example of selfish indulgence. See p. 190. So, too, the Gagas 

 put all children to death and stole others (Battel, Strange Adventures, p. 326). 

 " Keynes, Economic Consequences of the Peace, p. 215. * Ibid., loc. cit., p. 12. 



