LESSENING CHILD MORTALITY 647 



Lessened Child Mortality. — Among animals gen- 

 erally there is a direct relation between the number of 

 offspring and the hazards of early life. Those species in 

 which the chance of attaining maturity is good produce 

 few young ; those in which the hazards are great produce 

 large — sometimes enormous — numbers. With increas- 

 ing civilization human families tend to become smaller. 

 That this fact constitutes a menace to the perpetuation 

 of the highly civilized races cannot be denied. Man must 

 strive to overcome this handicap as he strives to overcome 

 other handicaps which interfere with human progress, 

 and an evident line along which achievement in this 

 respect is to be secured is by preserving to maturity all 

 the young that are fit examples of their race. Much has 

 been done in this direction in the past few decades, so 

 that at the present time infants have a much better 

 chance of living to maturity than did those born fifty 

 years ago. Much remains to be achieved in this direction, 

 but it is reasonable to look forward to a time when every 

 infant born in families of good stock will survive to ma- 

 turity and thus be able to bear its part in the perpetua- 

 tion of the race. 



Education. — In the last chapter progress was stated 

 to be commonly based on the achievements of the highly 

 intelligent, but to depend on the adoption of these 

 achievements by mankind in general. It is evident that 

 since this is the case it is only as such achievements 

 become known that progress will be made. Organized 

 society has adopted the plan of setting aside the years 

 of childhood and adolescence as a period of formal edu- 

 cation, namely, as a period during which shall be made 

 known to the members of the coming generation those 

 facts of human achievement upon which their own be- 

 havior and such progress as they in turn may make shall 

 be established. That part of the community which de- 

 votes itself to the task of education has to select from 

 the sum total of human experience those achievements 



