The New Orleans crescent. [volume] (New Orleans, La.) 1866-1869, 1868-01-19
POPULATION AND NATURAL SELECTION

The full meaning of modern civilization is
problem which extends into a far and as
yet an inconceivable future. 1t is true that
there is an ambitious school Of philosophers
who hold that the future offers field of in
vestigation similar to that of geometry or
astronomy. But they are, in fact, immeasur-
ably distant from the ground of ratiocination
indicated by the geometrician when he says,
estate one angle of pyramid, and you state all
its angles and the whole of its cubic contents"
and by the astronomer when he says, estate
the sun, and you state the solar system, state
the existence and the motion of single planet,
and you state the existence and the motion
of all the planets" Were it otherwise, the
secrets of the future could be revealed TO the
eye of scientific contemplation in aspects as
positive as the demonstrations of geometry
and the discoveries of astronomy. There
would be no longer vast and impending I'M
known to make human life pleasing, anx-
ious being" and hope, which spreads its
wings only over unfathomable seas, would
disappear from the sight Of man forever. 1t
is idle, however, to pursue the hypothesis
The mind, which is always in some sense
prisoner to its immediate environments, can
not sufficiently extricate itself from present
conditions of thought to conceive a compli-
cation of humanity with time different from
that which now exists.
But if we cannot foresee the ultimate
forms which modern civilization will take, we
can at least perceive its present drift and dis
cover some of the influences which impel it.
The principal of these are svitally concerned
with social states and dynamics. At no
former period were so many able minds
engaged in studying the relations of popula-
ton to subsistence, the forces of race pre-
servation and race antagonism, and the laws,
and the differentiating and ameliorating
effects of natural selection. There is no part
Of English literature more interesting and
important in its practical bearings, than that
which comprises the contributions on one or
another of these subjects by Nautilus, Mill,
Herbert Spencer and Darwin. We may refer
to the same general category work entitled
"Fecundity, Fertility and Sterility," by DIR.
Matthew Duncan, of Edinburgh. The object
of the work is to illustrate by an
elaborate collation. of statistics the
probabilities of motherhood in each year
of the child-bearing period. DR.. Duncan
shows that the climax of fertility is reached
at the age of thirty years, from which it de-
elines until it reaches extinction at the age of
forty or forty-fve. The care which he takes
to prove the longer intervals that must occur
between births after the age of thirty, is very
suggestive. In this he responds, uncon-
sciousiy perhaps, to an anxiety on the part
Of intelligent Englishmen and Scotchmen to
follow the advice of Nautilus and Mil for
people, voluntarily, without renouncing mar
rage, to limit procreation. DR.. Duncan allows
an average of three children to marriages at
thirty. This is the number fixed by Nautilus as
the highest average that is possible without
producing over-population.
But the Malthusian reform is open to some
very grave objections. Marriage and virtue
with respect to great number of people are
almost convertible terms; and. consequently. !
the remuneration of marriage on the part of
this class up to the age of thirty wears is
equivalent to Remuneration of virtue mn TO the
same period. Moreover, those persons whose
intellectual cultivation and moral discipline
would enable them to impose upon them
selves the restraints necessary to limiting re-
production to the required average, consti-
tute the very class of people which it is most
desirable to multiply; while inferior classes,
including the ignorant, the improvident and
the brutal, would not only not practice such |
self-control, but wouldbe afforded wider room |