t Alexander, "Malthusianism and Degeneracy,"
_Alienist and Neurologist_, Jan., 1901). It has, indeed, been
shown by Heron, Pearson, and Goring, that not only the
eldest-born, but also the second-born, are specially liable to
suffer from pathological defect (insanity, criminality,
tuberculosis). There is, however, it would seem, a fallacy in the
common interpretation of this fact. According to Van den Velden
(as quoted in _Sexual-Probleme_, May, 1909, p. 381), this
tendency is fully counterbalanced by the rising mortality of
children from the firstborn onward. The greater pathological
tendency of the earlier children is thus simply the result of a
less stringent selection by death. So far as they show any really
greater pathological tendency, apart from this fallacy, it is
perhaps due to premature marriage. There is another fallacy in
the frequent statement that the children in small families are
more feeble than those in large families. We have to distinguish
between a naturally small family, and an artificially small
family. A family which is small merely as the result of the
feeble procreative energy of the parents, is likely to be a
feeble family; a family which is small as the result of the
deliberate control of the parents, shows, of course, no such
tendency.

These considerations, it will be seen, do not modify the tendency
of the large family to be degenerate. We may connect this
phenomenon with the disposition, often shown by nervously unsound
and abnormal persons, to believe that they have a special
aptitude to procreate fine children. "I believe that everyone has
a special vocation," said a man to Marro (_La Puberta_, p. 459);
"I find that it is my vocation to beget superior children." He
begat four,--an epileptic, a lunatic, a dipsomaniac, and a
valetudinarian,--and himself died insane. Most people have come
across somewhat similar, though perhaps less marked, cases of
this delusion. In a matter of such fateful gravity to other human
beings, no one can safely rely on his own unsupported
impressions.

The demand of national efficiency thus corresponds with the demand of
developing humanitarianism, which, having begun by attempting to
ameliorate the conditions of life, has gradually begun to realize that it
is necessary to go deeper and to ameliorate life itself. For while i