IV
What are the ideals of the stage of civilization we of the Western world are now moving towards?
We have here pushed as far as need be the analysis of that declining birth-rate which has caused so much anxiety to those amongst us who can only see narrowly and see superficially.
We have found that, properly understood, there is nothing in it to evoke our pessimism. On the contrary, we have seen that, in the opinion of the most distinguished authorities, the energy with which we move in our present direction, through the exercise of an ever finer economy in life, may be regarded as a "measure of civilization" in the important sphere of vital statistics.
As we now leave the question, some may ask themselves whether this concomitant decline in birth-rates and death-rates may not possibly have a still wider and more fundamental meaning as a measure of civilization.
We have long been accustomed to regard the East as a spiritual world in which the finer ends of living were counted supreme, and the merely materialistic aspects of life, dissociated from the aims of religion and of art, were trodden under foot. Our own Western world we have humbly regarded as mainly absorbed in a feverish race for the attainment, by industry and war, of the satisfaction of the impulses of reproduction and nutrition, and the crudely material aggrandizement of which those impulses are the symbol.