n
the Middle Ages; but the death-rate was probably too high to permit of
any increase in the population. But after admitting that all these
causes were operative, it may be that we shall be obliged to acknowledge
also a psychological factor. If a nation has no hopes for the future, if
it is even doubtful whether life is worth living, if it is disposed to
withdraw from the struggle for existence and to meet the problems of
life in a temper of passive resignation, it will not regard children as
a heritage and gift that cometh from the Lord, but rather as an
encumbrance. That such was the temper of the later Roman Empire may be
gathered not only from the literature, which is singularly devoid of
hopefulness and enterprise, but from the rapid spread of monasticism and
eremitism in this period. The prevalence of this world-weariness of
course needs explanation, and the cause is rather obscure. It does not
seem to be connected with unfavourable external conditions, but rather
with a racial exhaustion akin to senile decay in the individual. But
there is no real analogy between the life of an individual and that of a
nation, and it would be very rash to insist on the hypothesis of racial
decay, which perhaps has no biological basis.

The influence of Christianity on population is very difficult to
estimate. Nothing is more unscientific than to collect the ethical
precepts and practices of nations which profess the Christian religion,
and to label them as 'the results of Christianity.' The historian of
religion would indeed be faced by a strange task if he were compelled to
trace the moral ideals of Simeon Stylites and of Howard the
philanthropist, of Francis of Assisi and Oliver Cromwell, of Thomas
Aquinas and Thomas a Becket, to a common source. The only ethical and
social principles which can properly be called Christian are those which
can be proved to have their root in the teaching and example of the
Founder of Christianity. But the Gospel of Christ was a product of
Jewish soil. It is historically connected with the Jewish prophetic
tradition, which it carried to its fullest development and presented in
an universalised and spiritualised form. Its social teaching consists
chiefly of general principles which have to be applied to conditions
unlike those contemplated by its first disciples, who were under the
influence of the apocalyptic expectations prevalent at the time. Jewish
morality was in its origin the morality of a