Little Essays of Love and Virtue

by Havelock Ellis

If, however, we wish to consider the real significance of the facts, without regard for the wild cries of ignorant cranks, it is scarcely necessary to point out here that neither the birth-rate taken by itself, nor the death-rate taken by itself, will suffice to give us any measure even of the growth of the population, to say nothing of the progress of civilisation or the happiness of humanity. It is obvious that we must consider both gains and losses, and put one against the other, if we wish to ascertain the net result. We may roughly get a notion of what that result is by deducting the death-rate from the birth-rate and calling the remainder the survival-rate. If we are really concerned with the question of the alleged suicide of the race, and do not wish to be befooled, we must pay little attention to the birth-rate, for that by itself means nothing: we must concentrate on the survival-rate. Then we may soon convince ourselves, not only that the human race is not committing suicide, but that not even a single one of the so-called civilised nations of which it is mainly composed is committing suicide. Quite the contrary! Every one of them, even France, where this peculiar "suicide" is supposed to be most actively at work, is yearly increasing in numbers.

It is interesting to note, moreover, that the French have been increasing faster, that is to say the survival-rate has been higher in recent years just before the war, when the birth-rate was at its lowest, than they were twenty years earlier, with a higher birth-rate. And if we take a wider sweep and consider the growth of the French population towards the end of the eighteenth century, we find the birth-rate estimated at the very high figure of 40. But the death-rate was nearly as high, the average duration of life was only half what it is now. So that the survival-rate in France at that time, with widely different rates of birth and death, was not much unlike it is now. The recent French birth-rate of 19 and less, which automatically causes the "Race-Suicide" marionette to dance with rage, is producing not far from the same result in growth of the population—we are not here concerned with the enormous difference in well being and happiness—as the extremely high rate of 40 which sends our marionettes leaping to the sky with joy. In war-time England, in 1917, the birth-rate sank to 17.8, yet the death-rate was at 14 and the increase of the population continued. The more the human race commits this kind of suicide, one is tempted to exclaim, the faster it grows!

It is, however, in the New World—as in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand—that we find the most impressive evidence of the real criteria of the growth in population set up for judgment on the racial suicide cranks. Canadian statistics bring out many points instructive even in their variation. Here we see not only unusual curves of rise and fall, but also pronounced differences, due to the special peculiarities of the French population, most clearly in the Province of Quebec but also in some parts of the Province of Ontario. In Quebec the birth-rate some years ago was 35, and the death-rate 21, both rates high, and the survival-rate high at 14; recently the birth-rate has risen to 37 and the death-rate fallen to 17, with the result that the survival-rate of 20 is the highest in the world, though it must be noted that the high birth-rate is not likely to last long, since in Quebec, as elsewhere in the world, increasing urbanisation causes a decreasing birth-rate. In mainly English-speaking Ontario the birth-rate is much lower, about 24, but the death-rate is also lower, about 14, so that the fairly considerable survival-rate of 10 is obtained. But we note the highly significant fact that some thirty years or more ago the birth-rate was much lower, about 19, and yet the survival-rate was almost 9, nearly as high as to-day! The death-rate was then at 10, and nothing could be more instructive as to the real relationship that holds in this matter. There has been a great rise in the birth-rate and the only result, as someone has remarked, is a great increase in the population of the grave-yards. Equally instructive is it to compare various cities in this same Province, living under the same laws, and fairly similar social conditions. In the report of the Registrar-General of Ontario for 1916 I find that highest in birth-rate of cities in the Province stands Ottawa with a very considerable French population. But first also stands the same city for infant mortality, which is three times greater than in some other cities in the Province with a low birth-rate. Sault Ste. Marie, again with an enormous birth-rate, stands third for infant mortality. Canada shows us that, even if we regard the crude desire for a large growth of population as reasonable—and that is a considerable assumption—a high birth-rate is an uncertain prop to rest on.

Canada is an instructive example because we have some ground for believing that the difference between the English-speaking and French-speaking populations—the greater care of the former in procreation and the more recklessly destructive methods of the latter in attaining the same ends—are due to their different attitudes towards the use of methods of birth-control. What the result of a general use of such methods is we know from the example already mentioned of Holland, where they are taught, officially recognised, and in general use, not only among the rich but among the poor. The result is that the birth-rate has been falling slowly and steadily for forty years. But the death-rate has also been falling and at a greater rate. So that the more the birth-rate has fallen the higher has been the rate of increase among the population.

It is perhaps in Australia and New Zealand that we find the most satisfactory proofs of the benefits of a falling birth-rate in relation to "Race-Suicide." The evidence may well appeal to us the more since it is precisely here that the race-suicide fanatic finds freest scope for his wrath. He looks gleefully at China with its prolific women, at Russia with its magnificent birth-rate before the War of nearly 50, at Roumania with its birth-rate of 42, at Chile and Jamaica with nearly 40. No nonsense about birth-control there! No shirking by women of the sacred duties of perpetual maternity! No immoral notions about claims to happiness and desires for culture. And then he turns from, those great centres of prosperity and civilisation to Australia, to New Zealand, and his voice is choked and tears fill his eyes as he sees the goal of "Race-Suicide" nearly in sight and the spectre of the Last Man rising before him. For there is no doubt about it, Australia and New Zealand contain a population which is gradually reaching the highest point yet known of democratic organisation and general social well-being, and the birth-rate has been falling with terrific speed. Sixty-years ago in the Australian Commonwealth it was nearly 44, only forty years ago in New Zealand it was 42. Now it is only about 26 in both lands. Yet the survival-rate, the actual growth of the population, is not so very much less with this low birth-rate than it was with the high birth-rate. For the death-rate has also fallen in both lands to about 10 (in New Zealand to 9) which is lower than any other country in the world. The result is that Australia and New Zealand, where (so it is claimed) preventives of conception are hawked from door to door, instead of being awful examples of "Race-Suicide," actually present the highest rate of race-increase in the world (only excepting Canada, where it is less firmly and less healthily based), nearly twice that of Great Britain and able at the present rate to double itself every 44 years. So much for "Race-Suicide."

The outcry about "Race-Suicide" is so far away from the real facts of life that it is not easy to take it seriously, however solemn one's natural temperament may be. We are concerned with people who arrogantly claim to direct the moral affairs of the world, even in the most intimately private matters, and who are yet ignorant of the most elementary facts of the world, unable to think, not even able to count! We can only greet them with a smile. But this question has, nevertheless, a genuinely serious aspect, and I should be sorry even to touch on the question of birth-control in relation to "Race-Suicide" without making that serious aspect clear.

"Race-Suicide," we know, has no existence. Not only is the race as a whole increasing in number, especially its White branches, but even among the separate national groups there is not even one civilised people anywhere in the world that is decreasing in number. On the contrary they are all, even France, increasing at a more or less rapid rate. In England and Wales, for example, where the birth-rate has steadily fallen during the last forty years from 36 to 23 (I disregard the abnormal rates of War-time) the population is still increasing, and even if the present falls in birth-rate and death-rate continue, it will for years still go on increasing by an excess of over 1,000 births a day. When we realise that this is merely what goes on in one corner of the world and must be multiplied enormously to represent the whole, we shall find it impossible even to conceive the prodigious flow of excess babies which is being constantly poured over the earth. If we are capable of realising all the problems which thereby arise we must be forced to ask ourselves: Is this state of things desirable?

"Be ye fruitful and multiply." That command was, according to the old story, delivered to a world inhabited by eight people. It has been handed down to a world in which it has long been ridiculously out of place, and has become merely the excuse for criminal recklessness among a race which has chosen to forget that the command was qualified by a solemn admonition: "At the hand of man, even at the hand of every man's brother, will I require the life of man." The high birth-rate has meant a vast slaughter of infants, it has meant, moreover, a perpetual oppression of the workers, disease, starvation, and death among the adult population; it has meant, further, a blood-thirsty economic competition, militarism, warfare. It has meant that all civilisation has from time to time become a thin crust over a volcano of revolution, and the human race has gone on lightly dancing there, striving to forget that ancient warning from a soul of things even deeper than the voice of Jehovah: "At the hand of man will I require the life of man." Men have recklessly followed the Will o' the Wisp which represented mere multiplication of their inefficient selves as the ideal of progress, quantity before quality, the notion that in an orgy of universal procreation could consist the highest good of humanity.

The Great War, that is scarcely yet merged into an only less war-like Peace, has brought at least the small compensation that it has led men to look in the face this insane ideal of human progress. We see to-day what has come of it, and the further evils yet to come of it are being embodied beneath our eyes. So that at last the voice of Jehovah has here and there been faintly heard, even where nowadays we had grown least accustomed to hear it, in the Churches. It is Dr. Inge, the Dean of London's Cathedral of St. Paul's, a distinguished Churchman and at the same time a foremost champion of eugenics, who lately expressed the hope that the world, especially the European world, would one day realise the advantages of a stationary population.[25] Such a recognition, such an aspiration, indicates that a new hope is dawning on the world's horizon, and a higher ideal growing within the human soul. The mad competition of the industrial world during the past century, with the sordid gloom and wretchedness of it for all who were able to see beneath the surface, has shown for ever what comes of the effort to produce a growing population by high birth-rates in peace-time. The Great War of a later day has shown, let us hope in an equally decisive manner, what comes to a world where men have been for long generations produced so copiously and so cheaply that it is natural to regard them as only fit to sweep off the earth with machine guns. And the whole world of to-day—with its starving millions struggling in vain to feed themselves, with most of its natural beauty swept away by the ravages of man, and many of its most exquisite animals finally exterminated—is likely to become merely the monument to an ideal that failed. It was time, however late in the day, for a return to common-sense. It was time to realise that the ideal of mere propagation could lead us nowhere but to destruction. On that level we cannot compete even with the lowest of organised things, not even with the bacteria, which in number and in rapidity of multiplication are inconceivable to us. "All hope abandon, ye that enter here" is written over the portal of this path of "Progress."

[25] This has long been recognised by men of science. Even anyone with the slightest knowledge of biology, Professor Bateson remarked in a British Association Presidential address in 1914, is aware that a population need not be declining because it is not increasing; "in normal stable conditions population is stationary." Major Leonard Darwin, the thoughtful and cautious President of the Eugenics Education Society, has lately stated his considered belief ("Population and Civilisation," Economic Journal, June, 1921) that increase in numbers means, ultimately, relative reduction of wealth per head, with consequent lowering of the standard of civilisation; that it also, under existing conditions, involves the production of a smaller proportion of men of ability; and, further, a depreciation of our traditions; he concludes that, whatever element in civilisation we regard—wealth, or stock, or traditions—"any increase in the population such as that now taking place will be accompanied by a lowering in the standard of our civilisation."