The herring multiplies with enormous rapidity
and on a vast scale, and it possesses a very small brain, and is almost
totally unequipped to grapple with the special difficulties of its
life, to which it succumbs on a wholesale scale. A single elephant is
carried for about two years in his mother's womb, and is carefully
guarded by her for many years after birth; he possesses a large brain;
his muscular system is as remarkable for its delicacy as for its power
and is guided by the most sensitive perceptions. He is fully equipped
for all the dangers of his life, save for those which have been
introduced by the subtle devilry of modern man, and though a single
pair of elephants produces so few offspring, yet their high cost is
justified, for each of them has a reasonable chance of surviving to old
age. The contrast from the point of view of reproduction of the herring
and the elephant, the low vertebrate and the high vertebrate, well
illustrates the tendency of evolution. It clearly brings before us the
difference between Nature's earlier and later methods, the ever growing
preference for quality of offspring over quantity.
It has been necessary to touch on the wider aspects of reproduction in
Nature, even when our main concern is with particular aspects of
reproduction in man, for unless we understand the progressive tendency
of reproduction in Nature, we shall probably fail to understand it in
man. With these preliminary observations, we may now take up the
question as it affects man.
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