Law of Population 99 



demanded a smaller population than the country 

 possessed, and this was immediately granted. If such 

 a state of affairs can be demonstrated in a modern 

 European State — one of the great Powers in the van 

 of civilisation — surely we are entitled to argue that the 

 same laws will operate in the world as a whole once it 

 is fully cultivated and yielding its maximum of the 

 means of subsistence. The world will be able to allow 

 a certain number of marriages, resulting in a fixed 

 birth-rate, and automatically this, and no more, will be 

 supplied. 



No doubt other forces will come into play. The 

 prevention of marriage on the part of the feeble-minded 

 will be an absolute necessity of the higher evolution of 

 the race, and this measure alone will have no small 

 effect in limiting the birth-rate. Moreover, man, in 

 increasing proportions under the influence of the 

 altruistic spirit, will tend to sacrifice his own personal 

 inclinations to the good of the race and the unborn 

 generations who are to come after. With a higher 

 spiritual evolution we cannot imagine men imbued 

 with the altruism of Christian ethics bringing children 

 into the world, knowing that their fate must be of a 

 most uncertain nature owing to the fact that the popu- 

 lation has outgrown the means of subsistence. 



The Eugenics Congress — the first of its kind — held 

 recently in London, brought prominently before the 

 public mind the question of the increase of the feeble- 

 minded, and the corresponding decline in rate of in- 

 crease of the professional classes. The explanation is 

 of the simplest. The feeble-minded are not of necessity 

 feeble-bodied. Physically, as a rule, they are at least 

 of average health, and they reproduce their kind in 

 large numbers because they are possessed of no thought 

 of " prudential restraint " ; in fact, their feeble- 

 mindedness is the sole cause of their excessive fecundity. 



