Be this as it may, however, it is manifest that in the end, pressure of population and its accompanying evils will disappear; and will leave a state of things requiring from each individual no more than a normal and pleasurable activity. Cessation in the decrease of fertility implies cessation in the development of the nervous system; and this implies a nervous system that has become equal to all that is demanded of it has not to do more than is natural to it. But that exercise of faculties which does not exceed what is natural, constitutes gratification. In the end, therefore, the obtainment of subsistence and discharge of all the parental and social duties, will require just that kind and that amount of action needful to health and happiness.

The necessary antagonism of Individuation and Genesis, not only, then, fulfills with precision the a priori law of maintenance of race, from Monad up to Man, but insures final attainment of the highest form of this maintenance a form in which the amount of life shall be the greatest possible, and the births and deaths the fewest possible. This antagonism could not fail to work out the results we see it working out. The excess of fertility has itself rendered the process of civilization inevitable; and the process of civilization must inevitably diminish fertility, and at last destroy its excess. From the beginning, pressure of population has been the proximate cause of progress. It produced the original diffusion of the race. It compelled men to abandon predatory habits and take to agriculture. It led to the clearing of the Earth's surface. It forced men into the social state; made social organization inevitable; and has developed the social sentiments. It has stimulated to progressive improvements in production, and to increased skill and intelligence. It is daily thrusting us into closer contact and more mutually dependent relationships. And after having caused, as it ultimately must, the due peopling of the globe, and the raising of all its habitable parts into the highest state of culture-after having brought all processes for the satisfaction of human wants to perfection-after having, at the same time, developed the intellect into complete competency for its work, and the feelings into complete fitness for social life -after having done all this, the pressure of population, as it gradually finishes its work, must gradually bring itself to an end.

CHAPTER III

SOCIALISM AND POPULATION

Moral restraint under socialism, an early English socialist's view, 118.-The economic independence of women as a check to population, 123. — The views of Malthus with regard to population-increase under socialism, 125. - Would socialism remove the institutional checks inherent in private property and competitive organization? 127. - The necessity for state pensions for mothers, 131.

[From the time of Malthus, orthodox economists have been unable to see the expediency of socialism, among other reasons because of their belief that socialism would weaken the prudential check and defeat its own ends in a flood of population. Socialists as a rule have not demonstrated either much inclination or much ability to meet this charge squarely, but the development of democracy, the increasing economic independence of woman, and society's revaluation of woman as a human being have furnished them with a powerful counterargument. Meanwhile some of them are advocating state pensions for all mothers, as an aid to economic independence. This proposal must not be confused with the philanthropic or charitable state aid given to widowed mothers.]

8. PRUDENTIAL RESTRAINT UNDER SOCIALISM1

If under the individual exertion and competition of equal or even partial security, the progress of improvement and consequent increase of comforts, would constantly tend to increase the prudential check, and limit the increase of numbers to the constantly

1 By William Thompson. Adapted from An Inquiry into the Principles of the Distribution of Wealth Most Conducive to Human Happiness, pp. 545-562. London, 1824.

increasing command of enjoyments; what would be the peculiar effects under that branch of equal security, which takes mutual coöperation for its mode of production, and equality for its rule of enjoyment? 1

Let us suppose, then, that the state of the country in which these [socialist] communities exist, is merely stationary, and admits of no increase of population; of nothing more than the replacing by new births those who yearly cease to live. In such a state of things, in ordinary society, as we have seen, when the people live in comfort, the prudential check is called into full exertion, and is abundantly adequate to prevent an injurious increase of members, or such as would lessen those comforts: but when the circumstances of the people are wretched, it is not the prudential check that operates; prudence has no place amidst eternal want; breeding goes on as amongst the lower animals, till cold, nakedness, hunger, disease, seize on their victims and keep down the population by misery to the level of their wretched means of support. What then is the modification that would be presented in the use of the prudential check by means of the system of cooperation, reposing, as all industry must repose, under the shelter of security? First, abundant comforts and the habit of enjoying would beget an unwillingness to part with them as before. Next, superior information and extended sympathy would increase and justify this disinclination, from a view of the discomfort it would produce to the new sharers as well as to the old. True that the inconveniences of a large family would not under mutual cooperation press so heavily on the individual as under competition with the most perfect equal security; but a regard for the common welfare and common loss of comforts in which their own would be included, would soon become at least as powerful a curb, in such minds of coöperators, as the simple individual motive produces in the minds of competitors. Suppose this motive however, of the loss of general comforts, to be ever so much weakened, to be reduced to nothing, still no evil would arise from its absence; for the circumstances of the new communities form such a barrier around them in the way of population, as would seem almost 1 That is, under socialism. — Ed.

to render superfluous the exercise of that prudence, with which, on this as on other occasions, they must be preeminently imbued.

The case supposed is, that the coöperating community cannot increase its numbers without decreasing its comforts by dividing them amongst a larger number, and that this numerical expansion of diminished enjoyment will not counterbalance the loss of its intensity to the smaller number. It is hardly possible to conceive any set of expedients better calculated to meet such a contingency, than those proposed for the coöperating communities.

There is no check or inconvenience from want felt by the married from inequalities as to numbers of children, all being equally educated and maintained at the common board: the peculiar inconvenience is simply that of the pain, trouble, and care, chiefly on the woman's side, of nourishing and attending children till two years old. From that age the peculiar trouble ceases. Many married persons in such communities, under such circumstances, would doubtless study the means of enjoying in the highest degree every pleasure of personal attachment, and even increasing those pleasures, without the necessity of a continual increase of births—an object, simple, reconcilable with the utmost delicacy, and demanding nothing but a mental effort from the party whom a new birth would most inconvenience. In agricultural districts of general society, where the capabilities of land and industry, and habits of the people, have been for a long time stationary, a marriage does not take place until an opening presents itself of succeeding to the occupation and establishment of old couples, or of those prematurely cut off by casualties. In such places, where the whole subject of overpopulation and its effects is brought within a narrow compass under the eye of the most simple, as in parts of Norway and Switzerland, we are told that they are perfectly understood, the prudential check is in the highest state of operation, comforts are not lessened by any tendency to breed beyond the means of support: and added to all this, early and tender attachments and domestic happiness and all the happiness that the sexes can render each other, are perhaps at their highest point. If such be the effect of having

the whole subject brought before the eye, under the system of competition, where the exertion of prudence on the part of every individual is requisite, the exertion of prudence on the part of the uninformed youth; what will be the effect of having the subject still more concentrated, of having the population concerns of a whole community more simple, clear, and less liable to chance, than those of any individual family, under the system of competition? What will be the effect of having the deliberative prudence of the whole community guiding, instructing, and if necessary supplying the place of the individual prudence of, the young, while at the same time that individual prudence, from previous education and completeness of the facts before it, cannot possibly make a false judgment; or if it err at all, must be with full perception of the circumstances necessary to the formation of a right judgment? Marriage would of course under these circumstances be late; later in proportion to the healthiness of the community; ten years perhaps later than where the circumstances of the society admitted of a pretty rapid increase.

There is a way, before alluded to, by which early marriages and universal healthiness, may coexist with a stationary population. Sexual, intellectual, and moral pleasures would be much increased thereby to the married parties. A mental effort on the side of refinement, not of grossness, is all the price necessary to be paid, and by only one party, for early marriages and mutual endearments, where the circumstances of society permit no increase of population. If this expedient of gentle exercise be not adopted, the risk of the evil-at whatever it may be estimated — of illicit intercourse, must be incurred. From the deplorable consequence of such intercourse, in the way of prostitution and all its miseries, the coöperating communities, as before shown, would, from their very organization, be altogether relieved. Women have as much command as men over the common property of the community, partake of the same education, and thus raising themselves to the same level, cast off at one bound their antiquated degradations and miseries, and at least double the happiness of both sexes by raising all their intercourse to that of intelligence and affection amongst equals.