SELECTIVE BIRTH-RATE 155 



the stimulus to expansion are well known — the capture 

 of Constantinople by the Turks with the dissemina- 

 tion of its traditional civilization, and the discovery of 

 America, chief among them. But, looking within, we 

 know that throughout Europe the monastic orders 

 had fallen into disfavour. In England, the actual 

 force of the change must have been increased enor- 

 mously by the wanton destruction of the monasteries 

 by Henry VIII., and the loss to the nation of their 

 accumulated stores of literature, art, and philosophy. 

 But let us mark the compensating effect. The very 

 completeness of the ruin forced the country to start 

 afresh, to seek out new lines of development ; and if, on 

 the one hand, the destruction of the monasteries led to 

 great misery among the poor and their other dependants, 

 and made necessary the Elizabethan Poor Law, on the 

 other it set free much of the intellect of the country, 

 and compelled it to start out anew to discover the 

 road to learning and the path to intellectual eminence, 

 unfettered by traditions of the past ; while, more im- 

 portant than all, it prevented the continual drain of the 

 best intellectual ability of the country into the celibate 

 life of the cloister. And so we were vouchsafed the 

 crowning glories of the great Elizabethan age as the 

 first outcrop, while a period of scientific and literary 

 activity set in, which carried England on through the 

 seventeenth century. 



On the Continent, the movement fared otherwise. 

 No Henry VIII. came so effectively to its rescue, or 

 unwittingly set it so firmly on the right path. The 

 existing powers grew alarmed as the great wave of 

 thought passed beyond their control ; and nations, with 



