Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/665

 POPULATION AND WAGES 649

Today, however, owing to various causes, the "propagation of the species" is ceasing to be considered as either a religious or a social duty. With the increasing sense of independence and the equally increasing habits of comfort and of luxury is developing in civilized communities an aversion, not only to overmultiplica- tion, but to multiplication in general. In so far as this aversion is considered as an individual feeling, it may be described as a psychic check to population; and, because it has grown partly out of economic conditions, it may be termed an economic check. The application of this psycho-economic check is becoming the de facto solution of the population problem ; and, although such a solution is still denounced as a Malthusian heresy, it is one of those solutions that mankind has accomplished " by marching," and that, notwithstanding the accepted dogmas of political econ- omy and Christian ethics, may before long have to be invested with the serious title of " natural law " — as something that simply is, whether it ought to be or not.

The correctness of these statements will, I hope, be sub- stantiated in the course of the present discussion.

The increase of population depends, as M. Gustave de Moli- nari observes, upon the reproductive power of man, upon the exercise of that power, and upon the available means to preserve and develop the fruits of that exercise ; and, by implication, the growth of population can be checked only by actual sterility, by a limited exercise of the reproductive power, or by the destruc- tion of the redundant numbers arising from an excessive appli- cation of the reproductive power.'

That the first of these three checks does not exist will be generally admitted; for, although Mr. Spencer's law — that fecundity decreases as organization develops — may be accepted, the diminution of fertility in the human race has not (owing, probably, to a mitigation of the struggle for life) proceeded far enough to establish equilibrium between the demands of the race and the demands of the individual. In other words, it is still possible for mankind, no matter how fast the means of

■G. DE MOLINARI, Cours d'lconomie politique (2""= Edition, Paris, 1863), t. I, p. 397-