The new generation rejects alike the
passive optimism of the first period and the passive pessimism of the
second period. Its attitude is hopeful but it realises that mere hope
is vain unless there is clear intellectual vision and unless there is
individual and social action in accordance with that vision.
It is to-day beginning to be seen that the old notion of progress by
means of reckless multiplication is vain. It can only be effected at a
ruinous cost of death, disease, poverty, and misery. We see this in the
past history of Western Europe, as we still see it in the history of
Russia. Any progress effected along that line--if "progress" it can be
called--is now barred, for it is absolutely opposed to those democratic
conceptions which are ever gaining greater influence among us.
Moreover, we are now better able to analyse demographic phenomena and
we are no longer satisfied with any crude statements regarding the
birth-rate. We realise that they need interpretation. They have to be
considered in relation to the sex-constitution and the age-constitution
of the population, and, above all, they must be viewed in relation to
the infant mortality-rate. The bad aspect of the French birth-rate is
not so much its lowness as that it is accompanied by a high infantile
mortality. The fact that the German birth-rate is higher than the
English ceases to be a matter of satisfaction when it is realised that
German infantile mortality is vastly greater than English.
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