(All Rights Reserved.) The Failing Birth-Rate

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLII, Issue 11, 17 March 1909, Page 52

(All Rights Reserved.) The Failing Birth-Rate

52

Dr. C. W. Saleeby,

Ages before the institution of human marriage, ages before mankind itself, there began to be manifest in the world a definite trend of progress in respect of that reproduction upon which all species depend, all living individuals being mortal. It may be said in general that, at first, in the effort for survival and increase. life tried the quantitative method. If we take the present day bacteria as representatives of'the primitive method, ,we see that not quality nor individuality, but quantity and numbers, arc the means by which, in their case, life seeks to establish itself more abundantly. To hpply, as may be usefully done, terms familiar in the study of our own species, it may be said that the birth-rate of the bacteria is of incredible magnitude. W THE AMAZING GERM. ' " AV’c express our own birth rate in its proportion per year to one thousand living. There is not enough type in the world to express the bacterial birth-rate per thousand per annum. Twenty thousand bacteria injected into a rabbit have been found to multiply into twelve thousand million in one day. “One bacteria lias been actually observed to rear a Small family of eighty thousand within a period of twenty four hours.” The cholera bacillus can duplicate every twenty minutes, and might thus in one day become 54)00,000,000,000,000,000,000, with the weight according to the calculations of Cohn, of about 7360 tons. In a few days, at this rate, there would be a mass of bacteria as big as the moon-, huge enough to fill the whole ocean. No reasonable bishop could desire more in the way of a birth-rate, I am sure. The ■•‘infant mortality,’* however, or in more general terms, the death rate, is proportionately large, in accordance with the general rule, which is true not only of mankind but of all species, that a high birth rate and a high death-rate go together. HOW PARENTS- CARE AFFECTS t LIFE. i Consistent with this fact is the tendency towards the lengthening of infancy, a very characteristic condition of the evolution of the higher forms of life. This lengthening ami accentuation of infancy makes for variety of development, and is supremely instanced in man, where it depends upon the decadence of instinct in order to make room for intelligence. Thus, to quote the words of Dr. Parsons (“The Family,'’ page 20), “we find that as infancy is prolonged in the progress of species, the care given to off spring by parents is increased. It extends over a longer period, and it is directed more and more towards tho total welfare of off spring. The need of a potentiality many-sided and enduring kind of parental care is filled through the social group we call the family.” THE OF ANIMALS. Now how are these facts, connected with the relation between the parents which we call marriage, temporary or permanent, foreshadowed or perfected? I would lav down the principle that the racial function or survival-value of marriage in all its forms, low or high, animal or human, consists in its services to the principle of motherhood, these services depending upon the help and strength which are afforded to motherhood by fatherhood. Let us now look very briefly at the facts of animal marriage from this point of view’. The phrase ’‘animal marriage’’ may possibly offend the reader, but is there any reason to be offended at the suggestion that the principle of marriage actually has a warrant older even than mankind? It has lately been pointed out by a distinguished naturalist, Mr. Ernest Thompson Seton, that animals, like mon,.have long been groping, bo to say, for an ideal form of marriage. We now’ know, as will be shown, that, contrary to popular opinion, promiscuity does not prevail amongst the lowest race* of men.

F.R.S., Edin.

MONOGAMY. Equally false is the popular notion that promiscuity prevails amongst most of tiie lower animals. •Promiscuity, it is true, does occur,'but <so also does strict monogamy, "and promiscuous animals, such as rabbits and voles, while higii in the Seale of fecundity, are low in the scale of general developments.'’ Says Mr. Seton: "It is commonly remarked that while the Mosaic- law did not expressly forbid polygamy, it surrounded marriage with so many restrictions that 'by living up to the spirit of them the Hebrew, ultimately was forced into pure monogamy. It is extremely interesting to note that, the animals, in their blind groping for an ideal form of union, have gone through the same stages, and have arrived at exactly the same conclusion. Monogamy is their best solution of the marriage question, and is the rule among all the higher and most successful animals.” THE QUADRITEDS’ COURTSHIPS. The moose, Mr. Seton tells ns, has several wives in one season, but only one at a time. The hawks practise monogamy, lasting for one season, "the male staying with the family, and sharing the care of the young till .they are well grown.” The wolves consort for life, but the death of one leaves the other free to mate again. There io a fourth method, "in which they pair for life, ami, in the case of death, the survivor remains disconsolate and alone to the end. This seems absurd. It is the way of the geese.” The point especially to be insisted upon as regards animal marriage is its evident service to race-culture. Marriage must be more important in proportion as the young of a species are helpless, and in proportion as their helplessness is long continued. The importance of marriage 'for man, therefore, must necessarily, 'be higher than for any of the lower animals. I THERE MAN'S C ASE DIFFERS. There is a tendency in eugenics to ignore environment—a tendency (natural enough, considering the eugenic point of view, and permissible eiough if we were talking about the eugenics or race-cul-ture of oaks. Ge.t an acorn of good stock, plant it, and leave it. and the physical environment will suffice for a good result. But the physical environment does not suffice to produce a human being—it never has sufficed and never will. A psychical environment of a certain quality is am absolute necessity in every case, past, present, or to conre. That .is why it is not enough that the right people should be brought together for parentage. With other species, and more definitely so the lower we go, physical parentage is the whole or nearly the whole of parentage; with man it is only the beginning, and can never achieve anything at all without psychical parentage. In man we find the lowest birth-rate of any animal in proportion to his body weight, the longest antenatal period, the longest period of maternal feeding, and by far the lowest infant mortality arnd general death-rate. IS A FATXING BIRTH-RATE ! AEARMING? , 1 A chief factor of progress has been, in a word, the suppression of the quantitative by the qualitative criterion of survival-value. Immeasurably vast vital economy and efficiency have thus been effected. This principle of the fall of the birth-rate, about which so mue'a foolishness is talked in the case of man, is one of the great consistent facts of organic history, and may be traced from the bacteria, upwards through such representative invertebrates as the insects, then through tl.e‘ fishes, the first vertebrates, tip to man, and amongst the various nations and strata of human society. The tendency of progress, in short —a tendency coincident with the evolution or ever higher and higher species—is to pass from the horrible Gargantuan wastefulness of the older methods towards the evident but yet lamentably unrealised

ideal —that every child born shall reach maturity. This great historical tendency, which will ultimately involve the erstrietion of parentage to the fit, fine and few, has occurred under the impartial rule of natural selection simply aaid solely because it has endowed with sur-vival-value the successive species in which it has been demonstrated. All organic history prove., that a low birthrate is a mark of high vital level.