262 THE CAUSATION OF DISEASE. 



improvement; but there is another unfavourable circumstance 



attending artificial checks to increase — i.e., that the children 



of women adopting this practice are generally born during the 



early period of their procreative life, and, in those cases where 



the father and mother are about the same age, when the father 



is young also. For, as a rule, the check is applied after the 



first two or three children are born at natural intervals ; it is 



not, that is to say, applied so as to allow an interval of several 



years between the two or three children who are permitted to 



be born, in which case some of them might be born at the 



prime of sexual life. We must also take account of the fact 



that the first child is generally inferior to those immediately 



following ; this is, at all events, the popular belief. From these 



several facts, it is obvious that a limitation in the number of 



births must tend to prevent the best children from being born. 



So far as the intellectual side of man is concerned, there 



ought to be little difficulty in testing the truth of the above 



conclusion, since it is an easy enough matter to obtain a list 



of intellectual prodigies. I have taken twenty-two celebrated 



men at haphazard, with the object of discovering what position 



they occupy, in order of birth, among their brothers and sisters. 



The following is the result of my investigation : — 



Poets : Poet-philosopher : 



Shakespeare, eldest son. Two Goethe, only son, eldest child, 



daughters born before him. Warriors : 



Both died young. Wellington, third son. 



Tennyson, third son. Robert Blake, eldest of 13 



Painter: sons and 2 daughters. 



Michael Angelo, second son. Statesmen-orators : 



Musician : Chatham, second son. 



Beethoven, second child, and Burke, second son. 



son, of 5 sons and 2 daughters. Gladstone, youngest son. 



Ruler: Warrior -statesmen: 



Cromwell, second son. Clive, eldest son. 



Philosophers : Warren HASTINGS, only child. 



Bacon, youngest son. Man of letters : 



Kant, second of 9 children. Swift, second child. 



Carlyle, eldest of 9 children. Historian : 



Scientists : Gibbon, eldest of 5 brothers and 



Newton, only child. 1 sister, all of whom died in 



Darwin, youngest but one of 6 their infancy. 



children. Novelist : 



Lyell, eldest son. Dickens, eldest son ; second 



child of family of 8. 



