oduction of higher moral
types,--though his general statement in regard to a perfected nervous
system, and a great diminution of human fertility, suggests that such
moral evolution would signify a very considerable amount of physical
change. If it be legitimate to believe in a future humanity to which
the pleasure of mutual beneficence will represent the whole joy of
life, would it not also be legitimate to imagine other transformations,
physical and moral, which the facts of insect-biology have proved to be
within the range of evolutional possibility?... I do not know. I most
worshipfully reverence Herbert Spencer as the greatest philosopher who
has yet appeared in this world; and I should be very sorry to write
down anything contrary to his teaching, in such wise that the reader
could imagine it to have been inspired by Synthetic Philosophy. For the
ensuing reflections, I alone am responsible; and if I err, let the sin
be upon my own head.

I suppose that the moral transformations predicted by Mr. Spencer,
could be effected only with the aid of physiological change, and at a
terrible cost. Those ethical conditions manifested by insect-societies
can have been reached only through effort desperately sustained for
millions of years against the most atrocious necessities. Necessities
equally merciless may have to be met and mastered eventually by the
human race. Mr. Spencer has shown that the time of the greatest
possible human suffering is yet to come, and that it will be
concomitant with the period of the greatest possible pressure of
population. Among other results of that long stress, I understand that
there will be a vast increase in human intelligence and sympathy; and
that this increases of intelligence will be effected at the cost of
human fertility. But this decline in reproductive power will not, we
are told, be sufficient to assure the very highest of social
conditions: it will only relieve that pressure of population which has
been the main cause of human suffering. The state of perfect social
equilibrium will be approached, but never quite reached, by mankind--

Unless there be discovered some means of solving economic problems,
just as social insects have solved them, by the suppression of sex-life.

Supposing that such a discovery were made, and that the human race
should decide to arrest the development of six in the majority of its
young,--so as to effect a transferrence of those forces, now deman