n various parts of
China.[108] Matignon, a French physician familiar with China, states that
it is the custom for a woman to suckle her child for at least three
years; should pregnancy occur during this period, it is usual, and quite
legal, to procure abortion. Infants brought up by hand are fed on
rice-flour and water, and consequently they nearly all die.[109]

Putting aside altogether the question of infanticide, such a state of
things is far from incredible when we remember the extremely insanitary
state of China, the superstitions that flourish unchecked, and the
famines, floods, and pestilences that devastate the country. It would
appear probable that when vital statistics are introduced into China
they will reveal a condition of things very similar to that we find in
Russia, but in a more marked degree. No doubt it is a state of things
which will be remedied. It is a not unreasonable assumption, supported
by many indications, that China will follow Japan in the adoption of
Western methods of civilization.[110] These methods, as we know, involve
in the end a low birth-rate with a general tendency to a lower
death-rate. Neither in the near nor in the remote future, under present
conditions or under probable future conditions, is there any reason for
imagining that the Chinese are likely to replace the Europeans in
Europe.[111]

This preliminary survey of the ground may enable us to realize that not
only must we be cautious in attaching importance to the crude birth-rate
until it is corrected, but that even as usually corrected the birth-rate
can give us no clue at all to natural increase because there is a marked
tendency for the birth-rate and the infantile death-rate to rise or sink
together. Moreover, it is evident that we have also to realize that from
the point of view of society and civilization there is a vast difference
between the natural increase which is achieved by the effort of an
enormously high birth-rate to overcome an almost correspondingly high
death-rate and the natural increase which is attained by the dominance
of a low birth-rate over a still lower death-rate.

Having thus cleared the ground, we may proceed to attempt the
interpretation of the declining birth-rate which marks civilization, and
to discuss its significance.

II

It must be admitted that it is not usual to consider the question of the
declining birth-rate from a broad or scientific standpoint. As we have
seen, no attempt