tendency for the birth-rate and the infantile death-rate to rise or sink together. Moreover, it is evident that we have also to realize that from the point of view of society and civilization there is a vast difference between the natural increase which is achieved by the effort of an enormously high birth-rate to overcome an almost correspondingly high death-rate and the natural increase which is attained by the dominance of a low birth-rate over a still lower death-rate.
Having thus cleared the ground, we may proceed to attempt the interpretation of the declining birth-rate which marks civilization, and to discuss its significance.
II
It must be admitted that it is not usual to consider the question of the declining birth-rate from a broad or scientific standpoint. As we have seen, no attempt is usually made to correct the crude birth-rate; still more rarely is it pointed out that we cannot consider the significance of a falling birth-rate apart from the question of the death-rate, and that the net increase or decrease in a nation can only be judged by taking both these factors into account. It is scarcely necessary to add, in view of so superficial a way of looking at the problem, that we hardly ever find any attempt to deal with the more fundamental question of the meaning of a low birth-rate, and the problematical character of the advantages of rapid multiplication.
The whole question is usually left to the ignorant preachers of the gospel of brute force, would-be patriots who desire their own country to increase at the cost of all other countries, not merely in ignorance of the fact that the crude birth-rate is not the index of increase, but reckless of the effect their desire, if fulfilled, would have upon all the higher and finer ends of living.