12 SCIENCE AND MORALS 



even told that Germany is resorting to expedients 

 which, cannot be justified on Christian principles 

 to fill her depleted homes. Whether this be true 

 or not the fact remains that nothing is now more 

 to be desired by all the combatant nations than 

 what we call in Ireland " long families." But 

 even if there had been no war, there is one other 

 factor which makes it quite certain that no 

 country ever will try, or if it ventures to try, 

 will ever succeed in any such experiment, and 

 that factor, forgotten by philosophers of this kind, 

 is human nature. Mr. Frankfort Moore years 

 ago wrote a pleasant story, called " The Marriage 

 Lease," in which doctrinaire legislation of a some- 

 what similar kind was described, and its inevitable 

 failure most amusingly depicted. The war dis- 

 poses of another of the President's maxims 

 (S., p. 10), that the decline in the birth-rate of a 

 country is nothing to be grieved about, and that 

 " the slightest acquaintance with biology " shows 

 that the " inference may be wholly wrong," which 

 asserts that " a nation in which population is not 

 rapidly increasing must be in a decline " (S., 

 p. 10). Human nature was neglected in the 

 first-mentioned case, and here it is the turn of 

 history to pass into the shade, history which, pace 

 the President, has really a good deal more bearing 

 upon a question of this kind than the " school-boy 

 natural history " which he thinks capable of 

 settling it. Thus we advance from breeding to 

 Malthusianism. It is perhaps not wonderful 

 that our next step should be the quiet, and of 

 course painless, extinction of the unfit. 



