f surprisingly with bees: they produce at will a
queen by the administering of special food. Bees, accordingly, are
further advanced in the knowledge of sexual development than men. They
have not, probably, been sermonized for two thousand years that it is
"indecent" and "immoral" to concern themselves with sexual matters.

It is also known that plants raised on good soil and well manured,
thrive luxuriantly, but yield no seed. That the nature of the food has
its influence upon the composition of the male sperm, and upon the
fecundity of the female egg with human beings also, is hardly to be
doubted. Thus mayhap the procreative power of the population depends in
a high degree upon the nature of the food it lives on. Other factors,
whose nature is still but little understood, also play a role. It is a
striking circumstance that a young couple may have no children after
long years of married life, yet, having separated, and each having mated
again, both new marriages are followed by healthy children.

One factor is of leading importance in the question of population in the
future--_the higher, freer position which all women will then occupy_.
Leaving exceptions aside, intelligent and energetic women are not as a
rule inclined to give life to a large number of children as "the gift of
God," and to spend the best years of their own lives in pregnancy, or
with a child at their breasts. This disinclination for numerous
children, which even now is entertained by most women, may--all the
solicitude notwithstanding that a Socialist society will bestow upon
pregnant women and mothers--be rather strengthened than weakened. In our
opinion, there lies in this the great probability that the increase of
population will proceed slower than in bourgeois society.

Our Malthusians need really not break their heads on the future of the
human race. Until now nations have gone down through the decline, never
through the increase of their population. In the last analysis, the
number of population is regulated without harmful abstinence and without
unnatural preventives, in a society that lives according to the laws of
Nature. On this head also the future will vindicate Karl Marx. His
theory also that every period of economic development carries with it
its own law of population will prove true under the rule of Socialism.

The author of the work "Die kuenstliche Beschraenkung der Kinderzahl"
(The Artificial Limitation of Progeny)[235] claim