“Well from what you said a while ago, I suppose the world must already be as full of people as it ought to be, and if everything is in equilibrium, the millennium ought to have already dawned. But you have not told me whether this equilibrium has been made secure and stable. For evidently if means have not been found to keep the population uniform and steady at its maximum limit of comfort, even a perfect equilibrium would soon be disturbed by its increase and the millennium set back again.
“You told me the stirpiculturists in the 20th century proposed to accomplish the two objects of restricting the race and at the same time improving it, by select limitation. How did the plan succeed?”
“It did not succeed at all,” he replied. “The population increased more rapidly than before. A state of society something like a corrupt and clandestine polygamy supervened. The tone of society instead of being elevated was distinctively lowered. Thus both of the objects they so hopefully set out to accomplish, disastrously failed. When it was definitely given up by the progressive party that they were defeated and obliged to confess they were on the wrong track there was a fearful revulsion and upheaval of society, as there always is when opinion is forced to fly from one extreme to another. Many persons felt they had been wronged—treated as criminals when they were only unfortunates.
“The danger from this class was now imminent, and they had the sympathy of many in the better walks of life. But the time soon rolled round that drove people to think of nothing but themselves. But this was one of those deliberate movements that nature seems to delight in dealing out to us. She dangles it over us like the sword of Damocles. There was time to think; before the thread snapped, if there was only the wit. It was a time of common danger, and there was no inclination nor profit in recriminations between the parties. In the presence of an appalling calamity they were both awed. They no longer contended with each other, they were both at their wits ends, and in fright they rushed into each others presence to consult not to fight; and trembled alike at the disaster that overwhelmed them both; like tigers slinking into the presence of their human enemies when threatened by a common danger; as an earthquake.
“All admitted, the disappointment and failure were complete.”
“It seems to me that might have been foreseen,” said I,—“what did they do next?”
“They were in a great quandary, and did not know what to do, many wild propositions were offered and discussed. The pessimists although as largely interested as anybody in the success of any plan aiming at the public welfare, were really pleased at the failure of this, because it fulfilled their evil predictions. They now said there was nothing to be done but to return to the ancient plan of nature in which every one looked after himself and his children.
“If one failed, it was nature’s sign that he was not wanted, and he had no business to have children. But the optimists declared it to be impossible to return to the barbarous conditions that prevailed in ancient times among savages. Nature, said they, has evolved civilization and altruism, and these are therefore as natural as barbarism. But nature preserves a certain congruity of relationship between things, that we cannot easily set aside, and so if we are going backward in regard to the care of our young we shall lose the advantages that we have gained in the improved quality of the citizens, we have made out of them. For if we throw all the responsibility on the parents, while we cannot depend on a reduction in the number of the children, we may be sure of a deterioration in their bringing up and education. If we go back to barbarism we must take all that barbarism imposes. The human race they said was born to luck. Whenever it got into a tight place, some lucky turn of fortune’s wheel always supplied its need and brought it out of its troubles, and they avowed their faith that something would yet turn up to tide the race over the present crisis. In the midst of these discussions, a great discovery was made or accidentally stumbled upon that gave confirmation to this hopeful philosophy, and relieved the fears of those philosophers who were in the habit of taking the destiny of the race very much to heart and who felt more or less responsibility for its future. That was a discovery of nature’s secret of the determination of sex. It enabled people to control the sex of their children, a power that had been ardently wished for ever since the days of Adam and scientifically sought after, at least as far back as the time of Aristotle. They thought that in this “option of sex,” as they styled it, they at last possessed the infinitely important power of the control of population. They had seen before this, that no restriction could succeed, not founded on the support of all. All discussion in this direction was brought to a sudden termination, by this timely discovery. All felt as if the great problem was solved in the most acceptable manner, not only in accordance with refined sentiment, but with the pressing requirements of society, because this vital condition that so intimately concerns us all is taken up by the state and administered for the benefit of the whole race.
“In your day you doubtless remember that generally boys were in greater request and more welcome by parents than girls. And there continued to be such a feeling until quite lately—for no very good reason, except the habit of heredity—since men could hardly be said to have had any advantage over women for the last 100 years. At any rate this prejudice assisted the state in the policy it adopted of reducing the proportion of females, and within two generations the census showed a reduction of fifty per cent in the number of females while the total population remained the same without increase. This result was peculiarly gratifying to the political economists and philosophers, for as they declared the state had now complete control of the population and could on a tolerably short notice increase or diminish it as the comfort of the race might demand.”
I interrupted the Professor here to express with some pardonable enthusiasm my congratulations that this vital question had been so successfully and thoroughly met. I said I always had confidence in my race and now more than ever. I felt proud of the honor of being an humble member of it; and more to the same effect; to which he listened with some impatience and then proceeded.