The provident and the thoughtful marry late and have few children. The criminal and the reckless classes propagate ad libitum. An excellent review of an excellent book in the Pall Mall Gazette of November 9, 1886, thus refers to the subject. Speaking of Mr. Arnold White's recent work, "The Problems of a Great City," it says, "He is convinced that the way things go now, it is the feeblest, the least moral, and most worthless classes of the community which multiply the most rapidly. It is the pauper and the criminal class which supplies the human rabbits who multiply in the warrens of our great city. The educated and the well-to-do increase much less rapidly. Hence the annual increase in the population proceeds mainly from the classes which add no strength to the nation; and those who are constantly within half-a-crown of starvation, are those who bring forth the multitude of the diseased and incapable children who bubble out of the ground for torment in this world if not in the next. ... He stands aghast, like all Malthusians, at early and improvident marriages; and appalled at the spectacle of the criminal and pauper class, with low cerebral development, renewing the race more rapidly than those of higher attainments. He demands that statesmen should no longer stand idly by, watching

the multiplication of the unfit, and the survival of the weakest and worst of the community. He would have them interfere, by imprisoning for life all habitual criminals, not as a punishment, but in order to prevent them from multiplying their kind." Nothing can be more certain than that we shall soon have a great many more views of this sort. The human race, in old countries at least, by its reckless propagation, is getting jammed into an impasse from which there is no escape. If it has not wisdom enough to limit, or rather, diminish its numbers by prudence, Nature will take the matter in hand, and with her summary processes of pestilence and famine make such a sweep as will somewhat amaze the world.

"Si nolles sanus, curres hydropicus."

The criminality of producing children whom one has no reasonable probability of being able to keep, must in time be seen in its true light, as one of the most unsocial and selfish proceedings of which a man nowadays is capable. The right of A. to marry, and to leave to B. the task of keeping his children, has ceased to be a matter of grim humour. A. and his prolific spouse must be made to realize that few evil-doers are more injurious to the world than they are. They may be models of virtue

according to conventional ethics, but those ethics are out of date. The barren prostitute, on whom they probably look down with scorn, does not at any rate aid in swamping the labour-market, nor even in recruiting her own class as they do. We may hope that, in the worst of times, the honest proletary will not selfishly refuse to share his half loaf with his famishing fellow. But, for the sake of the race, we may also trust that he will peremptorily refuse to share his crust with his reckless brother's eight or ten children.

These and many kindred topics bear obviously on the Service of Man. That Service will not be made lighter or simpler in a democratic Age. The complexity of social problems is so great, they need regarding from so many points of view, their right solution is so important, their wrong solution so perilous, that they can no longer be left to any official or limited class of inquirers. They concern all citizens; and few duties in our day are so imperative as their earnest, persistent, and reflective study. They do not happily need much book-lore. Clear heads and resolute hearts, aided by eyes open to the facts around them, will for this purpose more avail than academic culture. The modern man in search of well-being has two ends to bear in mind: First,

his own self-cultivation, especially of his heart, as incomparably most important both to his own hap

Secondly, it behoves him

extent of his power, by

piness and that of others. to help his fellows to the such improvements in the practice and theory of life as he can make good by sound reasons. In this direction I admit that he may encounter not prosperity, but persecution or even worse; but if he is a true man he will not mind that. Nor will the probable gloom of the coming time daunt brave hearts. There is a mauvais pas before us all, which we must get over as best we can. But nerve and resolution can do wonders; and men never appear and act so much to their advantage as when put undisguisedly on their mettle. Not by the promise of soft and smooth things are they attracted, but by the difficult and the dangerous. Bad as the forecast is, and great as the suffering before long may be, if only adequately realized and faced with neither panic fear nor thoughtless hope, the situation might begin to improve almost at once. If only the devastating torrent of children could be arrested for a few years it would bring untold relief.

The Service of Man is too honourable and inspiring a service to let us doubt that it will be wanting in worthy recruits.