1 62 HEREDITY AND SOCIETY 



the most lamentable results of the internal political 

 condition of France that the State and the Church can 

 no longer work together openly in their efforts to deal 

 with the problem, and that the educational world is torn 

 asunder by the religious and anti-religious forces of 

 action and reaction. 



However that may be, the decline in the birth-rate 

 has now become general throughout Western Europe 

 and North America, and it is perhaps not likely that 

 nations whose chief aim appears to be progressively 

 to increase the material comforts of life will return 

 easily to conditions which denote simpler surroundings 

 and a sterner sense of duty to the future. It must 

 be noted, however, that in Japan, in spite of much 

 material prosperity, during the past twenty years the 

 birth-rate has shown a considerable increase, rising 

 from about 27 to 33 per thousand ; so that the 

 shrinkage of population among the European races 

 may be compensated for ultimately by sustained in- 

 crease of the Asiatic peoples. As we said before, in 

 dealing with the question of migration, for the more 

 advanced classes of a nation to exert themselves to 

 raise the general conditions of environment, without 

 taking advantage of the fact to fill up the improved 

 spaces so created, will lead inevitably to an increase in 

 the number of inferior citizens, for whom the conditions 

 of existence have, through no merit or exertion of their 

 own, become easier. In the same way, if the Eastern 

 nations, while retaining their simple, less exacting 

 standards of life and different sense of racial morality, 

 can profit by our improvements in hygiene, take 

 advantage of our increasing medical knowledge, and 



