242 THE KEGULATION OF NUMBEKS 



words, could only have become disadvantageous had it led to 

 greatly increased competition among the members of the species 

 without any corresponding advantage. This might perhaps have 

 happened, had not the growth of the intellect indirectly produced 

 new causes of elimination and intensified some of the formerly 

 existing factors. Thus the change in food and in the mode of 

 life was evidently productive of a higher infant mortality ; such 

 changes were due to the growth of the intellect, and the higher 

 mortality consequent upon them, if not, as is possible, an actual 

 advantage, was at least countenanced by natural selection. 1 

 Such changes therefore were, other things being equal, tolerated, 

 as were also abstention from intercourse due to taboos, pre- 

 puberty intercourse, prolonged lactation, and so on. The 

 practices of abortion and infanticide together with prolonged 

 abstention from intercourse also due to the intellect enabled 

 man completely to escape any disadvantages which might have 

 arisen from his relatively excessive fecundity the reserve, so to 

 speak, of fecundity being possibly an advantage. 



In some such manner as this it seems that we have to regard 

 the present position of man with reference to fecundity. The 

 strength of fecundity is in the main a legacy from ancestors 

 who were subject to wholly different conditions. It is excessive 

 relatively to his present needs ; this excess has, however, not 

 been a disadvantage; for the consequences which might have 

 been deleterious have been avoided owing indirectly to the 

 modifications of the conditions of life and directly to the rise of 

 certain customs all ultimately traceable to the growth of the 

 intellect. 



1 There is some evidence that miscarriages are not uncommon among these 

 races (for Australia see Grey, loc. cit., vol. ii, p. 249, and for the Loucheux Indians 

 see Hardisty, loc. cit., p. 312). If this is so, it would appear also to be due to 

 changed conditions to which primitive races had not learnt to adapt themselves 

 there being no advantages in their so doing. 



