of civilization, prove itself a benefit. Moreover, a
population as large as possible is, even to-day, not an impediment to
but a promoter of progress--on the same principle that the existing
over-production of goods and food, the destruction of the family by the
enlisting of women and children in the factories, and the expropriation
of the handicrafts and the peasantry by capital have all shown
themselves to be conditions precedent for a higher state of
civilization.

We now come to the other side of the question: Do people multiply
indefinitely, and is that a necessity of their being?

With the view of proving this great reproductive power of man, the
Malthusians usually refer to the abnormal instances of exceptional
families and peoples. Nothing is proven by that. As against these
instances there are others where, under favorable conditions, complete
sterility shortly sets in. The quickness with which often well situated
families die out is surprising. Although the United States offer more
favorable conditions than any other country for the increase of
population, and yearly hundreds of thousands of people immigrate at the
most vigorous age, its population doubles only every thirty years. There
are nowhere instances on a large scale of the assertion concerning a
doubling period of twelve or twenty years.

As indicated by the quotations from Marx and Virchow, which may be
considered to state the rule, population increases fastest where it is
poorest because, as Virchow justly claims, next to drunkenness, sexual
intercourse is their only enjoyment. When Gregory VII. forced celibacy
upon the clergy, the priests of lower rank in the diocese of Mainz
complained, as stated before, that differently from the upper prelates,
they did not have all possible pleasures, and the only enjoyment left
them was their wives. A lack of varying occupation may be the reason why
the marriages of the rural clergy are, as a rule, so fruitful of
children. It is also undeniable that our poorest districts in
Germany--the Silesian Eulengebirge, the Lausitz, the Erzgebirge and
Fichtelgebirge, the Thuringian Forest, the Harz, etc.,--are the centers
of densest population, whose chief food are potatoes. It is also certain
that sexual cravings are strong with consumptives, and these often beget
children at a state of physical decline when such a thing would seem
impossible.

It is a law of Nature--hinted at in the quotations made from Herbert
Spe