Page:Confessions of an Economic Heretic.djvu/157

 weakens as man rises from a purely animal existence to a higher intellectual and emotional life. It may also be the case that the bearing and rearing of children conflict with the exercise of the new activities to which the more intellectual women are addicted. The equalitarianism, political and economic, which has displaced male supremacy, alike in the home and outside of it, has probably brought some contempt for the child-bearing and rearing functions among many active-minded women. If education and environment were everything, this might not count for much and might be compensated by the spread of opportunities among the “lower” classes. But if transmissible superior qualities of stock and race are important contributions to human worth, a situation, like the present, in which lower stocks and lower races displace higher stocks and higher races would denote a human retrogression. It may be that the conscious organized movement towards security of family livelihood, which is playing an important part in the public policy of most advanced peoples, will do much to reduce the risks and costs of larger families and to restore the natural appeal of child-life to married people. If it is possible for a newly married couple to have both a baby and a motor-car without injury to their accepted ways of living, the car may cease to oust the baby.

One final consideration, not easily assessable, should enter into any treatment of the population questions.