Freeland

T >> Theodor Hertzka >> Freeland

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Since there can be no doubt that the power of adaptation, of which we have
just spoken, was absolutely necessary to the perpetuation of any species in
the struggle for existence in the very beginning of organic life upon our
planet, it must have been acquired in immemorial antiquity, and must
consequently be a part of the ancient heritage of all existing organisms.
There certainly was a time, in the very beginning of life, when this power
of adaptation was not yet acquired; but nature has an infallible means of
making not only useful but necessary characters the common property of
posterity, and this means is the extirpation of species incapable of such a
power of adaptation. The selection in the struggle for existence is
effected by the preservation of those only who are capable of development
and of transmitting their acquired characters to posterity until those
characters become fixed, such individuals as revert to the former condition
being exterminated as they appear.

The reciprocal adaptation of fecundity to death-rate has thus belonged
unquestionably for a long time to the specific character of all existing
species without exception. Its presence is manifested not merely in the
great universal fact that all species, despite many varying
dangers--leaving out of view sudden external catastrophes and attacks of
special violence--are preserved from either extermination or deterioration,
but also in isolated phenomena which afford a more intimate glimpse into
the physiological processes upon which the adaptation in question depends.
Human knowledge does not yet extend very far in this direction, but
accident and investigation have already given us a few hints. Thus, for
example, we know that, as a rule, high feeding diminishes the fecundity of
animals; stallions, bulls, etc., must not become fat or their procreative
power is lessened, and the same has been observed in a number of female
animals. As to man, it has long been observed that the poor are more
fruitful than the rich, and, as a rule, notwithstanding the much greater
mortality of their children, bring up larger families. The word
'proletarian' is derived from this phenomenon as it was known to the
Romans; in England, Switzerland, and in several other countries the upper
classes--that is, the rich--living in ease and abundance, have relatively
fewer children--nay, to a great extent decrease in numbers. The census
statistics in civilised countries show a general inverse ratio between
national wealth and the growth of the population--a fact which, however,
will be misinterpreted unless one carefully avoids confounding the wealth
of certain classes in a nation with the average level of prosperity, which
alone has to be taken into account here. In Europe, Russia takes the lead
in the rate of growth of population, and is without question in one sense
the poorest country in Europe. France stands lowest, the country which for
more than a century has exhibited the most equable distribution of
prosperity. That the English population increases more rapidly, though the
total wealth of England is at least equal to that of France, is explained
by the unequal distribution of its wealth. Moreover, it is not merely
wealth that influences the growth of population--the ways in which the
wealth is employed appear to have something to do with it. In the United
States of America, for example, we find--apart from immigration--a large
increase with an average high degree of prosperity, offering thus an
apparent exception to our rule. Yet if we bear in mind the national
character of the Yankees, excitable and incapable of calm enjoyment, the
exception is sufficiently explained, and it is brought into harmony with
the above principle. But the study of this subject is still in its infancy,
and we cannot expect to see it clearly in its whole complex; nevertheless
the facts already known show that the connection between the habits and
life of fecundity is universally operative.

JOHN VUKETICH (_Right_): Certain phenomena connected with variations in
population appear, however, to contradict the principles that disastrous
circumstances act as stimuli to fecundity. For example, the fact that the
number of births suddenly increases after a war or an epidemic, in short
when the population has been decimated by any calamity, is to be explained
by the sudden increase in the relative food-supply on account of the
diminution of the number of the people. In this case, the greater facility
of supplying one's wants produces a result which our theory teaches us to
expect from a greater difficulty in doing so.

JAN VELDEN (_Right_): I know that this is the customary explanation of the
well-known phenomenon just mentioned, and I must admit that an hour ago I
should have accepted this explanation as plausible. Now, however, I do not
hesitate to pronounce it absurd. Or can we really allow it to be maintained
that, after a war or an epidemic, it is easier to get a living, wealth is
greater, than before these misfortunes? I think that generally the contrary
is the fact; after wars and epidemics men are more miserable than before,
and on that account, and not because it is easier to get a living, their
fecundity increases.

The conception to which our friend has just appealed is exactly like that
concerning the famishing herrings or elephants; it has been entertained
only because economic prejudice was in want of it, and it prevails only so
far as this prejudice still requires it. If we were not now discussing the
population question, but were speaking merely of war and peace, disease and
health, the previous speaker would certainly regard me with astonishment,
would indeed think me beside myself, if I were to be guilty of the
absurdity of contending that, for example, after the Thirty Years' War the
decimated remains of the German nation enjoyed greater prosperity and found
it easier to live, or that the survivors of the great plagues of antiquity
and the Middle Ages were better off than was the case before the plagues.
His sound judgment would at once reject this singular notion; and if I
showed myself to be obstinate, he could speedily refute me out of the old
chronicles which describe in such vivid colours the fearful misery of those
times. But since it is the population question which is under
consideration, and some of the shreds of that veil of which our honoured
President spoke seem to flutter before his eyes, he heedlessly mistakes the
absurdity in question for a self-evident truth which does not even ask for
closer examination. The misery that follows war and disease now
becomes--and is treated as if it must be so, as if it cannot be imagined
otherwise--a condition in which it is easier to obtain a supply of food,
since--thus will the veil of orthodoxy have it--misery is produced only by
over-population. Since men suffer want because they are too numerous, it
_must_ be better for them when they have been decimated by war and disease.
From this categorical 'must' there is no appeal, either to the sound
judgment of men, or to the best known facts; and should rebellious reason
nevertheless venture to appeal, something is found wherewith to silence her
too loud voice, as for example the reminder that the survivors would find
their wealth increased by what they inherited from the dead, that the
supply of hands--the demand is simply conveniently forgotten in this
connection--has been lessened, and so on.

EDMOND RENAULD (_Centre_): I wish to draw attention to another method of
violently bringing the fact that the growth of the population bears an
inverse ratio to the national prosperity into harmony with the Malthusian
theory of population, or at least of weakening the antagonism to this
theory. For example, in order to explain the fact that the French people,
'in spite of their greater average well-being,' increase more slowly than
many poorer nations, the calumny is spread abroad that the blame attaches
to artificial prevention, the so-called 'two-children system.' Even in
France many believe in this myth, because they--ensnared by Malthus's false
population law--are not able to explain the fact differently. Yet this
two-children system is a foolish fable, so far as the nation, and not
merely a relatively small section of the nation, is concerned. It is true
that in France there are more families with few children than there are in
other countries; but this is very easily explained by the fact that the
French, on account of their greater average prosperity, are on the whole
less fruitful than most other peoples. But that the Frenchman intentionally
limits his children to two is an absurdity that can be believed only by the
bitter adherents of a theory which, finding itself contradicted by facts,
distorts and moulds the facts in order to make them harmonise with itself.
It should not be overlooked that such a limitation would mean, where it was
exercised, not a slow increase, but a tolerably rapid extinction. Nothing,
absolutely nothing, exists to prove that French parents exercise an
arbitrary systematic restraint; the irregularity of chance is as
conspicuous here as in any other country, with only the general exception
that large families are rarer and small ones more frequent than elsewhere,
a fact which, as has been said, is due to diminished fecundity and not to
any 'system' whatever.

At the same time, I do not deny that the wealthy classes, particularly
where the bringing up of children is exceedingly costly, do to some extent
indulge in objectionable preventive practices, which, however, are said to
be not altogether unknown in other countries.

ALBERT MOLNAR (_Centre_): The just mentioned fable of the two-children
system is also prevalent among certain races living in Hungary,
particularly among the Germans of Transylvania and among the inhabitants of
certain Magyar districts on the Theiss. The truth here also is,
that--apart, of course, from a few exceptions--the cause of the small
increase in population must be sought in a lower degree of fecundity, which
fecundity--and I would particularly emphasise this--everywhere in Hungary
bears an inverse proportion to the prosperity of the people. The slaves of
the mountainous north, who live in the deepest poverty, and the Roumanians
of Transylvania, who vegetate in a like miserable condition, are all very
prolific. Notwithstanding centuries of continuous absorption by the
neighbouring German and Magyar elements, these races still multiply faster
than the Germans and the Magyars. The Germans, living in more comfortable
circumstances, and the few Magyars of the northern palatinate, are far less
prolific, yet they multiply with tolerable rapidity. The Germans and
Magyars of the plains, in possession of considerable wealth, are almost
stationary, as are the already mentioned Saxons of Transylvania.

ROBERT MURCHISON (_Right_): In the second place, we would ask whether,
contrary to the former assumption that man in his character of natural
organism was subject to a universal law of nature imposing no check upon
increase in numbers but that of deficiency of food--we would ask whether,
on the contrary, the power acquired by man over other creatures does not
constitute him an exception to that now correctly stated law of nature
which provides that an equilibrium between fecundity and death-rate shall
automatically establish itself before a lack of food is experienced. Our
misgiving is strengthened by the fact that among other animals, as a rule,
it is not so much the change that occurs in the fecundity of the species,
as that which occurs in the relation of the species to external foes, that
restores the equilibrium when the death-rate has been altered by any cause.
Let us assume, for example, the herrings have lost a very dangerous
foe--say that man, for some reason or other, has ceased to catch them--it
is probable that their indefinite increase will not in the first instance
be checked by a change in their fecundity, but an actual large increase in
the number of the herrings will most likely lead to such an increase in the
number and activity of their other natural foes that an equilibrium will
again be brought about by that means.

Man, as lord of the creation, especially civilised man, has generally no
other foe but himself to fear. Here, then, when the death-rate happens to
be diminished by the disappearance of evils which he had brought upon
himself, the equilibrium could be restored _only_ by a diminution of
fecundity; here it would be as if nature was prevented from employing that
other expedient which, in the world of lower animals, she, as a rule,
resorts to at once, the increase of the death-rate by new dangers. I admit
that several facts mentioned by the last speaker belonging to the Freeland
government show that nature would find this, her only remaining
expedient--the spontaneous diminution of fecundity--quite sufficient. It
cannot be denied that the number of births decreases with increasing
prosperity; but is it certain that this will take place to a sufficient
extent permanently and radically to avert any danger whatever of
over-population? For, apart from very rare exceptions which tire too
insignificant to make a rule in such an important matter, the births have
everywhere a little exceeded the deaths, though the latter have hitherto
been everywhere unnaturally increased by misery, crime, and unwholesome
habits of life; and if in future it remains the rule that the births
preponderate, let us say to only a very small extent, then eventually,
though not perhaps for many thousands of years, over-population must occur,
for the lack of any external check.

In order permanently to prevent this, there must be established sooner or
later an absolute equilibrium between births and deaths. Can we really
depend upon nature spontaneously to guarantee us this? Is it absolutely
certain that nature will, as it were, say to man: 'My child, you have by
the exercise of your reason emancipated yourself from my control in many
points. You have made ineffectual and inapplicable all but one of those
means by which I protected your animal kindred from excessive increase, and
the one means you have left untouched is just that which I have been
accustomed to employ only in extreme cases. Do not look to me alone to
furnish you with effectual protection against that evil, but make use of
your reason for that purpose--_for that also is my gift_.'

The supposition that, in this matter, nature really indicates that man is
to exercise some kind of self-help gains weight when one recalls the course
of human evolution. Our Freeland friends have very appositely and
strikingly shown us how the men of the two former epochs of civilisation
treated each other, first as beasts for slaughter and then as beasts of
burden. And what was it but want that drove them to both of these courses?
Is not the conviction forced upon us that our ancestors were compelled at
first to eat each other, and, when they refrained from that, to decimate
each other, simply because they had become too strong to be saved from
over-population by the interposition of nature? In the first epoch of
civilisation man protected himself against a scarcity of food by slaying
and, driven by hunger, straightway devouring, his competitor at nature's
table. What happened in the second epoch of civilisation was essentially
the same: men were consumed slowly, by piecemeal, and a check put upon
their increase by killing them and their offspring slowly through the pains
and miseries of servitude. In short, since man has learnt to use his reason
he has ceased to be a purely natural creature, his own will has become
partly responsible for his fate; and it seems to me that in the population
question of the future he will not be left to the operation of nature
alone, but must learn how to help himself.

LOTHAR MONTFORT (_Freeland_): That man, by the exercise of his reason, has
made himself king of nature, and has no special need to fear any foe but
himself, is certainly true; and it is just as true that he can and ought to
use this reason of his in all the relations of the struggle for existence.
Moreover, I do not doubt that if it were really true, as the previous
speaker apprehended, that man has become too strong for nature to save him
from over-population in the same way in which she saved his lower
fellow-creatures, then man would be perfectly able to solve this problem by
a right use of his own reason. Should he actually be threatened by
over-population after he had left off persecuting his fellow men, recourse
could and would be had to the voluntary restriction of the number of
children.

In the first place, it is not too much to expect that physiology would be
able to supply us with means which, while they were effectual, would not be
injurious to health or obnoxious to the aesthetic sentiment, and would
involve the exercise of no ascetic continence; though all the means
hitherto offered from different quarters, and here and there actually
employed, fail to meet at least one or more of these conditions. In the
second place, it is certain that public opinion would be in favour of
prevention as soon as prevention was really demanded in the public
interest. That the declamations of the apostles of prevention, powerful as
they have been, have not succeeded in winning over the sympathies of the
people is due to the fact that those apostles have been demanding what was
altogether superfluous. There has hitherto been, and there is now, no
over-population; the working classes would not be in the least benefited by
refraining from the begetting of children; hence, prevention would in truth
have been nothing but a kind of offering up of children to the Moloch of
exploitational prejudice. The popular instinct has not allowed itself to be
deceived, and moral views are determined by the moral instincts, not by
theories. On the other hand, if there were a real threat of
over-population, in whatever form, the restriction of the number of births
would then be a matter of general interest, and the public views upon
prevention would necessarily change. Should such a change occur, it would
be quite within the power of society to regulate the growth of population
according to the needs of the time. It may safely be assumed that no
interference on the part of the authorities will be called for; the
exercise of compulsion by the authorities is absolutely foreign to the free
society, and cannot be taken into consideration at all. The modern opinion
concerning the population question, the opinion that is gradually acquiring
the force of a moral principle--viz. that it is reprehensible to beget a
large number of children--must prove itself to be sufficiently powerful for
the purpose, it being taken for granted, of course, that means of
prevention were available which were absolutely trustworthy, and did not
sin against the aesthetic sentiment. But if this did not suffice, the
incentive to restriction would be furnished by the increased cost of
bringing up children, or by some other circumstance.

But it is really superfluous to go into these considerations, for in this
matter nature has no need whatever of the conscious assistance of man. Man
is, in this respect, no exception; what he expects from nature has been
given in the same degree to other creatures, and all that is essential has
already been furnished to him.

As to the first point, I need merely remark that, though man is the king of
animals, he is in no way different from all the others as to the point
under consideration. There are animals which, when the danger from one foe
diminishes, may be exposed to increased danger from other foes, and in the
case of such, therefore, as the previous speaker quite correctly said, the
restoration of the disturbed equilibrium does not necessarily presuppose a
diminution of fecundity. But there are other animals which, in this matter,
are exactly in the same position as man. They have no foes at all whom they
need fear, and a change of death-rate among them can therefore be
compensated for only by a corresponding change in the power of propagation.
The great beasts of prey of the desert and the sea, as well as many other
animals, belong to this category. What foe prevents lions and tigers,
sperm-whales, and sharks from multiplying until they reach the limit of
their food supply? Does man prevent them? If anyone is really in doubt as
to this, I would ask who prevented them in those unnumbered thousands of
years in which man was not able to vie with them, or did not yet exist? But
they have never--as species--suffered from lack of food; consequently
nature must have furnished to them exactly what _we_ expect from her.

In fact, as I have said, she has already furnished us with it. For it is
not correct that, in the earlier epochs of civilisation, man assisted
nature in maintaining the requisite equilibrium between the death-rate and
the fecundity of his species. It is true that men assisted in increasing
their own death-rate by slaying each other, and by torturing each other to
death; but they did not in this way restore an equilibrium that had been
disturbed by too great fecundity or too low a mortality; on the contrary,
they disturbed an equilibrium already established by nature, and compelled
nature to make good by increased fecundity the losses occasioned by the
brutal interference of man. The previous speaker is in error when he
ascribes the rise of anthropophagy in the first competitive struggles in
human society to hunger, to the limitation of the food supply, by which the
savages were driven to kill, and eventually to eat, their fellow savages.
Whether the opponent was killed or not made no material difference in the
relations between these two-legged beasts of prey and their food supply.
Nature herself took care that they never increased to the actual limit of
their food supply; if they had been ten times more numerous they would have
found the food in their woods to be neither more nor less abundant. They
opposed and murdered each other out of ill-will and hatred, impelled not by
actual want but by the claim which each one made to everything (without
knowing how to be mutually helpful in acquiring what all longed for, as is
the case under the _regime_ of economic justice). Whether there were many
or few of them is a matter of indifference. Put two tribes of ten men each
upon a given piece of land, and they will persecute each other as fiercely
as if each tribe consisted of thousands. It is true that the popular
imagination generally associates cannibalism with a lack of food or of
flesh; but this mistake is possible only because the doctrine of
exploitation fills the minds of its adherents with the hallucination of
over-population. Certainly cannibals do not possess abundance in the sense
in which civilised men do, but this is because they are savages who have
not, or have scarcely, risen out of the first stage of human development.
To suppose that they were driven into cannibalism by over-population and
the lack of food, is to exhibit a singular carelessness in reasoning. For
it is never the hungry who indulge in human flesh, but those who have
plenty, the rich; human flesh is not an article of food to the cannibal,
but a dainty morsel, and this horrible taste is always a secondary
phenomenon; the cannibal acquires a taste for a practice which originally
sprang from nothing but his hatred of his enemy.

Again, neither is the action of the exploiter induced by a diminution of
the food supply, nor would such a diminution prevent future
over-population. Men resort to mutual oppression, not because food is
scarcer, but because it is more abundant, and more easily obtainable than
before; and the misery which is thereby occasioned to the oppressed does
not diminish but increases their number. It is true that misery at the same
time decimates those unfortunates whose fecundity it continually increases;
but experience shows that the latter process exceeds the former, otherwise
the population could not increase the more rapidly the more proletarian the
condition of the people became, and become the more stationary the higher
the relative prosperity of the people rose.

That, apart from insignificant exceptions, an actually stationary condition
has never been known is easily explained from the fact that actual
prosperity, real social well-being, has never yet been attained. When once
this becomes an accomplished fact the perfect equilibrium will not be long
in establishing itself. The same applies to every part of nature in virtue
of a great law that dominates all living creatures; and there is nothing to
justify the assumption that man alone among all his fellow-creatures is
_not_ under the domination of that law.

(_End of Fourth Day's Debate_)

CHAPTER XXVII

FIFTH DAY

The fourth point in the Agenda was: _Is it possible to introduce the
institutions of economic justice everywhere without prejudice to inherited
rights and vested interests; and, if possible, what are the proper means of
doing this?_