A higher and nobler human happiness is attainable only through social
evolution, and this comes from greater freedom of thought, from bolder
enquiry, from broader experience, and from a scientific study of the
laws of causation. What "is" becomes "right" from custom, but with our
yearnings for a higher ideal, sentiment slowly yields to the logic of
comparison, and, often wiping from our eyes the sorrows over vanishing
idols, we behold broader vistas of human powers, possibilities, duties,
and destiny.
As the proper study of mankind is man, influenced wholly by a desire to
be useful to a society to which I am indebted for the pleasures of
civilised life, I offer this brief volume as a comment on a phase of the
social condition of the times, and as my conclusions regarding its
interest for the future.
* * * * *
CHAPTER I.
THE PROBLEM STATED.
_The spread of moral restraint as a check.--Predicted by Malthus.--The
declining Birth-rate.--Its Universality.--Most conspicuous in New
Zealand.--Great increase in production of food.--With rising food
rate falling birth-rate.--Malthus's checks.--His use of the term "moral
restraint."--The growing desire to evade family obligations.
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