210 Evolution of Society. 



stage should be speedily reached, it may be admitted that 

 the conception has for ages made occasional visits to the 

 human mind, and is at the present time engaging the atten- 

 tion of speculative thinkers and writers, who, following 

 substantially the leadings of physiology, intimate that all 

 we have to do, in order to secure immortality here on earth, 

 is to learn how to perfect the forces and processes of ab- 

 sorption and assimilation in the human body, so that they 

 shall be equal, and that none of the chemical elements com- 

 posing the body shall secure permanent lodgment, as occurs 

 in the hardened muscles, ligaments, tissues and brittle 

 bones of old age ; whereupon it is claimed that the vital 

 force will be competent to run the machinery of life for- 

 ever, in perennial youth. 



Whatever the ultimate truth may be in this regard, in 

 all the earlier stages or ranks of life the reproductive ten- 

 dency is necessarily great, and evidently so for the purpose 

 of supplying the waste of life that inevitably occurs, thus 

 preventing the extinction of species ; and, in the later and 

 higher, the reproductive tendency usually diminishes in 

 some proportion to the diminished need, as life becomes 

 more safe and mental action with its opportunities is nor- 

 mally increased. 



It may be said, here as well as anywhere, that the su- 

 preme question in all societary evolution is this question 

 of the rate of reproduction. In vegetal life, especially, and 

 in brute-animal life as well, in the main, increase in the 

 rate and ratio of reproduction is in the line of progress and 

 development — certainly so in their earlier stages — since 

 the needs of man are thereby the better and more surely 

 supplied; as well as waste, and seed and germ necessities 

 for continued future use. 



In human life a high degree of reproductive activity 

 is necessitated by the destructions and wastes of war, 

 disease, poverty, ignorance, crime, and other like causes 

 of death and removal, and by and through the inherent 

 workings of associated conditions accompanying them. But 

 the associated conditions of peace, health, suitable prosper- 

 ity, intelligence, and obedience to the laws of life and 

 society, through the natural and necessary workings of asso- 

 ciated physical and other conditions, result in a diminishing 

 rate and ratio of reproduction, and, co-ordinately, in in- 

 creased intellectual development, in relief in the strug- 



