PERSONAL AND SOCIAL EFFICIENCY 219
unmarried, or to choose the father of their children and the size
of their family, the normal current of those instincts making for
the preservation and instinct of the race, obstructed by artificial
barriers of economic circumstances, would be restored to their
natural course. If the support of a young family were no longer
a heavy and injurious strain upon the economic resources of the
parents and their future career a grave anxiety, the human love of
children and the attractions of a complete home life would proba-
bly check that rapid decline of the birth-rate which to many is
one of the darkest features of our present order. It would not,
indeed, restore the reckless propagation of former times which
imposed on parents, and chiefly upon the mother, a burden in-
jurious in its private incidence and detrimental to society. But
while the better economic order would stop compulsory mar-
riages and undesired and therefore undesirable offspring, it
would restore the play of the normal philoprogenitive instincts.
The net effect would seem to be some retardation of the de-
cline of birth-rate in those types of families where the condi-
tions, physical and psychical, appear favourable to good nature
and good nurture for children, and a positive elimination of cer-
tain types of union unfavourable to sound offspring. The to-
tal effect upon the quantitative issue would of course depend upon
the balance between this freer play of the philoprogenitive in-
stinct and the other influences, not directly affected by economic
causes, which make for smaller families. But that the quality
or character of the population must be improved by the more
natural play of the rejective and selective influences here indi-
cated can hardly admit of controversy. Indeed, it may well be
urged that the crowning testimony to the validity of the human
law of distribution will consist in the higher quality of human
life it will evoke by liberating and nourishing the natural art of
eugenics in society.
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