The Colored Race 



171 



Certain writers, like Mr. Tourgee, for example, in their pre- 

 dictions for the future, rely upon " the greater prolificness of 

 the negro," as though the prolificness of any plant or animal 

 were a fixed quantity. But the naturalist knows within what 

 wide limits the prolificness of any plant or animal may vary. 

 That under natural and favorable conditions this prolificness 

 shows a certain rate of increase, and that, on the contrary, 

 when the natural conditions are removed and inimical factors 

 are brought to bear, the rate of increase falls, and may con- 

 tinue to fall to complete extinction. In the study of different 

 organic forms we find of course great differences in the proli- 

 ficness, depending upon certain laws which have been fairly 

 well worked out. 



No one, to my knowledge, has more clearly brought this 

 out, and especially so in its bearings upon the multiplication 

 of the human race, than Herbert Spencer. In his Principles 

 of Biology, Part VI, he treats of the laws of multiplication, an 

 elaboration of a paper which originally appeared in the West- 

 minster Review for April, 1852, entitled "A Theory of Popula- 

 tion deduced from the General Law of Animal Fertility." 

 Here he points out the antagonism between growth and sexual 

 and asexual genesis, between development and sexual and 

 asexual genesis, between expenditure and genesis, and between 

 nutrition and genesis. He .shows us how the vitality of any 

 organic form divides itself between individuation and genesis, 

 between maintaining individual life and increasing the species. 

 He shows us that where these forms are minute and low in 

 the organic scale, with little or no differentiation of parts, and 

 where individuation is almost nothing, the genesis is enorm- 

 ous ; and where, as we rise in the organic scale, there is more 

 individual growth and development, and consequently a 

 greater expenditure of the vitality in this direction, the genesis 

 falls. And further, that inimical factors which in any way 

 reduce the normal quantum of vitalitj', not ovXy reduce the 

 amount expended upon individuation, but also upon genesis, 

 and the prolificness must consequently fall. We can trace 

 this "moving equilibrium" between individuation and genesis 

 in man as well. Therefore we expect to find in the higher 



