Sanitary
science began to develop and to exert an enormous influence on the
health of nations. At the same time the supreme importance of popular
education was realised. The total result was that the nature of
"prosperity" began to be transformed; instead of being, as it had been
at the beginning of the industrial era, a direct appeal to the
gratification of gross appetites and reckless lusts, it became an
indirect stimulus to higher gratifications and more remote aspirations.
Foresight became a dominating motive even in the general population,
and a man's anxiety for the welfare of his family was no longer
forgotten in the pleasure of the moment. The social state again became
more stable, and mere "prosperity" was transformed into civilisation.
This is the state of things now in progress in all industrial
countries, though it has reached varying levels of development among
different peoples.
It is thus clear that the birth-rate combined with the death-rate
constitutes a delicate instrument for the measurement of civilisation,
and that the record of their combined curves registers the upward or
downward course of every nation. The curves, as we know, tend to be
parallel, and when they are not parallel we are in the presence of a
rare and abnormal state of things which is usually temporary or
transitional.
It is instructive from this point of view to study the various nations
of Europe, for here we find a large number of small nations, each with
its own statistical system, confined within a small space and living
under fairly uniform conditions.
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