Nor is it true that a falling birth-rate means a
falling population; the French birth-rate has long been steadily
falling, yet the French population has been steadily increasing all the
time, though less rapidly than it would had not the death-rate been
abnormally high. It is not the number of babies born that counts, but
the net result in surviving children. An enormous number of babies are
born in China; but an enormous number die while still babies. So that
it is better to have a few babies of good quality than a large number
of indifferent quality, for the falling birth-rate is more than
compensated by the falling death-rate. That is what we are attaining in
England, and, as we know, our steadily falling birth-rate results in a
steadily growing population.
There is still more to be said. Small families and a falling birth-rate
are not merely no evil, they are a positive good. They are a gain for
humanity. They represent an evolutionary rise in Nature and a higher
stage in civilisation. We are here in the presence of great fundamental
principles of progress which have been working through life from the
beginning.
At the beginning of life on the earth reproduction ran riot. Of one
minute organism it is estimated that, if its reproduction were not
checked by death or destruction, in thirty days it would form a mass a
million times larger than the sun. The conger-eel lays fifteen million
eggs, and if they all grew up, and reproduced themselves on the same
scale, in two years the whole sea would become a wriggling mass of
fish.
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