October 1, 1887.] 



KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



265 



E]^E,tITERATUftE,&.^RlL 



LONDON: OCTOBER 1, 1887. 



HUMAN LIFE. 



jjMONG the most perplexing problems re- 

 lating to humanity must be included the 

 strange contrast between what men aim at 

 in regard to human life, and what would 

 result if their efforts were successful. It is 

 an .accepted principle of philanthropy that 

 human hfe should be carefully nurtured in 

 all available ways; it is a recognised test of good govern- 

 ment and of satisfactory progress in civilisation that 

 population should increase, and that sickness, pesti- 

 lence, famine, war, and all death-dealing agencies should 

 diminish. But suppose the efforts of philanthropy, political 

 economy, and science in these directions were successful, 

 suppose that in all the chief nations and among all the prin- 

 cipal races the rate of the growth of population were 

 increa-sed, or even maintained unchanged, for but a few 

 centuries — the merest second in the history of the world 

 or even of races — what must inevitably happen ere long? 

 Would human h.appiness be increased ? Would, even in the 

 long run, human life be extended? On the contrary, utter 

 and irretrievable misery would ensue. The human race 

 would deteriorate ; nay, its growth and development 

 suddenly ceasing, it would run considerable risk of coming 

 to an untimely end. 



I am not an admirer of Mr. Ruskin's philosophy — great 

 though he m.ay be as an art critic and as a rhetorician. I 

 consider, indeed, the attention it has received a most 

 depressing feature of the age, seeing that there is no con- 

 nection between art and philosophy, or between eloquence 

 and re.asoning, and Mr. Ruskin's philosophy is shallow, his 

 reasoning naught. Yet, underlying its absurdly fervid 

 grandiloquence, the following bit of fine writing contains 

 (or rather conceals) a most important truth. " Loss of 

 life 1 " says the eminent art critic ; " by the ship over- 

 whelmed in the river, shattered on the sea ; by the mine's 

 blast, the earthquake's burial, you mourn for the multitude 

 slain. You cheer the lifeboat's crew ; you hear with praise 

 and joy of the rescue of one still breathing body more at the 

 pit's mouth ; and all the while, for one soul that is saved 

 from the momentary passing away (according to your 

 creed to be with its God) " — [though .as to this, Mr. Ruskin, 

 " you can't quite always generally tell ; " the soul thus .saved 

 may have^may not, in fact, have done so well] — " the lo.st 

 souls, locked in their polluted flesh, haunt with worse than 

 ghosts the shadows of your churches, and the corners of 

 your streets ; and your weary children watch, with no 

 memory of Jerusalem, and no hope of return from their 

 captivity, the weltering to the sea of your waters of 

 Babylon." 



If the thought underlying this turgid strain is just, if the 

 saving of life c;xnnot be regarded as always an unmixed 

 blessing — and who can doubt this? — how much more 



obvious should it be that the numerical increase in the 

 number of the living may become the reverse of a blessin<', 

 indeed little better than an unmixed curse, to the whole 

 human race. 



Before me lies a statistical record, from which I learn 

 that in England, despite emigration and widespread pauper- 

 ism (with attendant high mortality), the population, during 

 the last twenty years, has increased at the rate of lA per 

 cent, per annum, with every sign of growing at the same 

 rate, or even at an increasing rat«, for many years to come. 

 Admirable country I excellent administration I encouraging 

 outlook for the future ! At this rate the population of the 

 old country may be expected to increase tenfold in about 

 154 years. One rather wondei's how the question of wages, 

 already pressing rather seriously upon the English people 

 because of undue numbers, and consequently too close com- 

 petition (over-production of workers, in fact), will appear 

 when the encouraging development of the population of 

 England has gone on to this extent. Putting the present 

 population of England at about 30,000,000, the population 

 in 2031 wiU be 300,000,000, unless the encouraging growth 

 of numbers should in some way be interrupted. 



But let us look a little farther ahead. England is not so 

 young a country but that we can look back over 621 years 

 of her history, to the year 1256, when the first of our 

 English Kings to celebrate a jubilee, Henry III., the 

 rather mild sou of the not exemplary John, had been fifty 

 yeai-s on the throne. During the interval which has elapsed 

 since then a great deal has taken place in England, but 

 England has not grown in population at the rate at which 

 she is gi-owing now. For if she had that would mean that 

 her population in 1256 amounted only to 3,000 persons, all 

 told; and C'ceur de Lion, Henry III.'s uncle, used up ten 

 times that number at least in fighting only. It would seem, 

 then, as though the population of England had not only 

 been growing, but growing at an increasing rate — a result, 

 indeed, which follows still more obviously if the actual 

 population in successive centuries, from the time of William 

 the Conqueror onwards until now, be considered. We may 

 then at least look forward for a continual increase at the 

 rate of 1^ per cent, during the next six centuries. What, 

 then, will be the pleasing state of affairs in England in 

 the year 2500 or thereabouts ? The population increasing 

 tenfold in 15-1: or 155 years, will by the year 2500 have 

 increased 10,000-fold, or will amount to 300,000,000,000, 

 exceeding some 200 times tlie probable present population 

 of the whole earth. There will then be about six square 

 feet of space for each inhabitant of England ; and bj' that 

 time, we may assume, the three-acres-and-a-cow idea will 

 have had to be given up by the statesmen swaying those 

 300,000,000,000 " under Britain's royal sceptre then." As 

 for the " imperial sceptre " with its sw.ay over the colonies 

 and subject populations of Great Britain, it would be diffi- 

 cult to say how it would work, even if the 9,000,000 of 

 square miles forming Great Britain's present empire should 

 by that time have increased to 20,000,000. 



But the future of the United States, viewed in the same 

 way, is not less " encouraging," according to one view, or 

 less appalling according to the other. The population of 

 America doubles in about twenty years, or five times in a 

 century, five doublings meaning a thirty-two-fold increase. 

 In four centuries, at this rate, the increase of the population 

 of the United States would be about a million-fold (thirty- 

 two times thirty-two times thirty-two times thirty-two 

 times), or the population would amount to .sixty milhons 

 of millions, or thereabouts. This would be a population of 

 about 16,000,000 per square mile, or 10,000,000 per square 

 mile, assuming a fair absorption of surrounding territory, 

 and 4,000,000 per square mile if the whole of North and 



