These questions of population are not new. More than two thousand years
ago, many of the wisest philosophers of all the centuries meditated
deeply upon the tendencies of the population to crowd upon subsistence,
and in many ages and many countries, the situation has been discussed
with serious forebodings for the future.
In all ages thinking men have regarded war with aversion, yet with peace
and domestic prosperity other dangers arose to threaten the progress of
the race, and as the passing generations cried out for some remedy for
the ever pressing evils, thinking men have been proposing measures
somewhat harmonising with the knowledge or the sentiment of the times.
Whether we are wiser than our ancestors remains an unsettled question.
The old Greeks faced the problem boldly. There were two dangers in the
minds of these ancient philosophers. There was the danger of
over-population of good citizens, and there was the danger of increasing
the burden good citizens had to bear by the maintenance of defectives.
However good the breed, over-population was an economic danger, for,
said Aristotle, "The legislator who fixes the amount of property should
also fix the number of children, for if the children are too many for
the property the law must be broken.
Pages:
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136