Arsène Dumont seems to have been one of the first who observed this significance of the oscillation of the birth-rate, though he expressed it in a somewhat peculiar way, as the social capillarity theory. It is the natural and universal tendency of mankind to ascend, he declared; a high birth-rate and a strong ascensional impulse are mutually contradictory. Large families are only possible when there is no progress, and no expectation of it can be cherished; small families become possible when the way has been opened to progress. "One might say," Dumont puts it, "that invisible valves, like those which direct the circulation of the blood, have been placed by Nature to direct the current of human aspiration in the upward path it has prescribed." As the proletariat is enabled to enjoy the prospect of rising it comes under the action of this law of social capillarity, and the birth-rate falls. It is the effort towards an indefinite perfection, Dumont declares, which justifies Nature and Man, consoles us for our griefs, and constitutes our sovereign safeguard against the philosophy of despair.
When we thus interpret the crude facts of the falling birth-rate, viewing them widely and calmly in connection with the other social facts with which they are intimately related, we are able to see how foolish has been the outcry against a falling birth-rate, and how false the supposition that it is due to a new selfishness replacing an ancient altruism.39 On the contrary, the excessive birth-rate of the early industrial period was directly stimulated by selfishness. There were no laws against child-labour; children were produced that they might be sent out, when little more than babies, to the factories and the mines to increase their parents' income. The fundamental instincts of men and women do not change, but their direction can be changed. In this field the change is towards a higher transformation, introducing a finer economy into life, diminishing death, disease, and misery, making possible the finer ends of living, and at the same time indirectly and even directly improving the quality of the future race.40 This is now becoming recognized