eugenics problems. We must allow only those whom we desire to come in or to be born. But whom do we desire? This problem is not the simple one of the breeder of race horses, draught animals, or fine porkers. There is no single and simple quality that we are to breed for, such as speed, physical strength, or quantity of flesh. The answer is contingent upon the answer to the larger and more difficult question of the kind of society we want to develop.

A. THE QUESTION OF NUMBERS

222. Utopia and the Serpent1

BY THOMAS HUXLEY

Suppose a shipload of English colonists to form a settlement in such a country as Tasmania was in the middle of the last century. On landing they find themselves in the midst of a state of nature, widely differing from that left behind them. They proceed to put an end to this state of things over the area they wish to occupy. They clear away the native vegetation, and introduce English vegetable and animal life, and English methods of cultivation. Considered as a whole the colony is a composite unit introduced into the old state of nature; and, thenceforward, a competitor in the struggle for existence. Under the conditions supposed there is no doubt of the result, if the work of the colonists be carried out intelligently. On the other hand, if they are slothful, stupid, or careless, there is no doubt that the old state of nature will have the best of it.

Let us now imagine that some administrative authority, as far superior to men as men are to their cattle, is set over the colony. The administrator would, so far as possible, put a stop to the influence of external competition by thoroughly extirpating the native rivals, whether man, beasts, or plants. And he would select his human agents with a view to his ideal of a successful colony. Next, in order that no struggle for means of existence between human agents should weaken the efficiency of the corporate whole, he would make arrangements by which each would be provided with those means. In other words, selection by means of a struggle for existence between man and man would be excluded. At the same time, the obstacles to the development of the full capacities of the colonists would be removed by the creation of artificial conditions of existence of a more favorable character. Protection against heat and cold; drainage and irrigation, as preventitives of excessive rain and drought; roads and canals, to overcome obstacles to locomotion; mechanical agencies to supplement the natural strength of men, would all be afforded. With every step in this progress in

'Adapted from "Prolegomena" to Evolution and Ethics, v-vii (1894).

civilization, the colonists would become more and more independent. of nature. To attain his ends the administrator would avail himself of the courage, industry and co-operative intelligence of the settlers; and it is plain that the interests of the community would be best served by increasing the proportion of persons who possess such qualities, in other words, by selection directed toward an ideal. Thus the administrator might look for the establishment of an earthly paradise, a true garden of Eden, in which all things should work together toward the well-being of the gardeners, in which men themselves should have been selected with a view to their efficiency as organs for the performance of the functions of a perfected society.

But this Eden would have its serpent, and a very subtle beast too. Man shares with the rest of the living world the mighty instinct of reproduction and its consequence, the tendency to multiply with great rapidity. The better the measures of the administrator achieved their object, the more completely the destructive agencies of the state of nature were defeated, the less would that multiplication be checked. Thus as soon as the colonists began to multiply, the administrator would have to face the tendency to the reintroduction of natural struggle into his artificial fabric, in consequence of the competition, not merely for the commodities, but for the means of existence. When the colony reached the limit of possible expansion, the surplus population must be disposed of somehow; or the fierce struggle for existence must recommence and destroy the artificially created system.

223. Early Appraisals of Population

A) BY AN EARLY HISTORIAN2

And thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth, and thou shalt spread abroad to the west, and to the east, and to the north, and to the south; and in thee and thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed.

B) BY AN EARLY POET3

Lo, children are a heritage of Jehovah;
And the fruit of the womb is his reward.

As arrows in the hands of a mighty man

So are the children of youth.

Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them.

2From Gen. 28:14 (750 B. C.).

"From Ps. 127:3-5 (200 B. C.).

C) BY ARISTOTLE1

There is an inconsistency in equalizing the property and not regulating the number of the citizens. One would have thought that it was even more necessary to limit population than property; and that the limit should be fixed by calculating the chances of mortality in the children, and of sterility in married persons. The neglect of this subject, which in existing states is so common, is a neverfailing cause of poverty among the citizens, and poverty is the parent of revolution and crime.

D) BY SIR William templE

The true and natural ground of trade and riches is the number of people in proportion to the compass of the ground they occupy. This makes all things necessary to life dear, and forces. men to industry and parsimony. These customs which grow first from necessity become with time to be habitual to the country. And wherever they are so, that place must grow great in traffic and riches, if not disturbed by some accident or revolution, by which the people come either to be scattered or destroyed. When things are once in motion trade begets trade as fire does fire; and people go much where people have already gone.

E) BY SIR JOSIAH CHILD

You cry up the Dutch to be a brave people, rich and full of cities, that they swarm with people as bee-hives with bees; if a plague come they are filled up presently and such like; yet they do all this by inviting all the world to come and live among them. You complain of Spain, because their inquisition is so high, they'll let nobody come and live among them, and that's the main cause of their weakness and poverty. Will not a multitude of people strengthen us as well as the want of it weaken them? Sure it will.

F) BY DANIEL DEFOE

Whence is all this poverty of a country? 'Tis evident 'twas want of trade and nothing else. Trade encourages manufacture,

'Adapted from The Politics, II, 6 (357 B.C.); tr. by B. Jowett.

"Adapted from "An Essay upon the Advancement of Trade in Ireland," in Works, III, 2-3 (1673).

"Adapted from "England's Great Happiness," in McCulloch's Select Collection of Early English Tracts on Commerce, 263 (1677).

'Adapted from "Extracts from a Plan of English Commerce, being a Compleat Compendium of the Trade of This Nation," in McCulloch's Select Collection of Scarce and Valuable Tracts on Commerce, 112-113 (1730).

prompts invention, increases labor and pays wages. As the number of people increase, the consumption of provisions increases. As the consumption of provisions increases, more lands are cultivated. In a word as the land is employed the people increase of course and the prosperity of a nation rises and falls just as trade is supported or decayed. "Tis by their multitude, I say, that all wheels. of trade are set on foot, the manufacture and produce of the land and the sea are finished, cured and fitted for the markets abroad; 'tis by the largeness of their gettings that they are supported.

G) BY SIR JAMES STEUART

The generative faculty resembles a spring with a loaded weight, which always exerts itself in proportion to the diminution of resistence; when food has remained some time without augmentation or diminution the spring is overpowered; the force of it becomes less than nothing, inhabitants will diminish at least in proportion to the over charge. If on the other hand food be increased the spring will exert itself in proportion as the resistence diminishes: people will begin to be better fed; they will multiply, and in proportion as they increase in numbers, the food will become scarce again.

H) BY ARTHUR YOUNG

In spite of the assertions of all political writers for the last twenty years, who place the prosperity of a nation in the greatest possible population, an excessive population without a great amount of work and without abundant productions is a devouring surplus for a state; for this excessive population does not get the benefits of subsistence, which, without this excess, they would partake of: the amount of work is not sufficient for the number of hands; and the price of work is lowered by the great competition of the laborers, from which follows indigence to those who cannot find work.

I) BY ADAM FERGUSON10

The number in which we should wish mankind to exist is limited only by the extent of place for their residence and of provision for their subsistence and accommodation; and it is commonly observed that the numbers of mankind in every situation do multiply

Adapted from Principles of Political Economy, Being an Essay on the Science of Domestic Policy in Free States, 20 (1767).

'Adapted from The Farmer's Tour through the East of England, 429 (1771).

10

1oAdapted from Principles of Moral and Political Science, II, 409–410 (1792).

up to the means of subsistence. To extend these limits is good; to narrow them is evil; but although the increase in numbers may thus be considered as object of desire, yet it does not follow that we ought to wish the species thus indefinitely multiplied.

B. THE MALTHUSIAN THEORY

224. The Social Crisis at the Time of Malthus11

BY FRANCESCO S. NITTI

At the time of Adam Smith's death, in 1790, the French Revolution had just burst forth, and the choice spirits of the whole of Europe followed it with enthusiasm and trust. Very fortunately for himself, Smith did not see the days of terror and the ruin of the French Revolution, nor did he behold the frightful economic crisis which later resulted from the industrial revolution in his own country. In what different surroundings and under what different conditions Malthus conceived and published his work!

The French Revolution was stifled in blood, and upon the political horizon of Europe there already appeared the showers which announced the Napoleonic storms. The tyrant had been killed, the old privileges abolished, but the illusion had also proved false in a great and far-reaching way; for, in spite of reforms, society had remained essentially the same.

The life of England beheld by Malthus in his youth was not less saddening. Various successive seasons of scarcity had impoverished British agriculture, while, influenced by the rapid development of industries, the population increased and the phenomenon of over-population systematically occurred. Imports and custom duties hindered the rapid progress of the means of subsistence and of exchange. The evils of war and famine found a sad counterpart in the occurrence of a terrible industrial crisis, than which not even England has seen a sadder or a vaster. The great number of discoveries had, in fact, originated the formation of the great industrial system; and, crushed by this last, the smaller industries were violently injured and unable to resist. Thus the old industries died away on all sides, bringing down in their ruin thousands of workmen, and causing a strong feeling of misfortune to be felt by the whole of England. This evil state of things was the more deeply felt because the new ideas, spread among the educated classes, augmented the subjective causes of misery.

"Adapted from Population and the Social System, 13-18 (1897).