-proposals that were sufficiently foolish, for neither in
France nor elsewhere will the individual allow the statistician to
interfere officiously in a matter which he regards as purely intimate
and private. But the real character of this tendency of the birth-rate,
as an essential phenomenon of civilization, with which neither moralist
nor politician can successfully hope to interfere, is beginning to be
realized in France. Azoulay, in summing up the discussion after
Macquart's paper[144] had been read at the Society of Anthropology,
pointed out that "nations must inevitably follow the same course as
social classes, and the more the mass of these social classes becomes
civilized, the more the nation's birth-rate falls; therefore there is
nothing to be done legally and administratively." And another member
added: "Except to applaud."

It is probably too much to hope that so sagacious a view will at once be
universally adopted. The United States and the great English colonies,
for instance, find it difficult to realize that they are not really new
countries, but branches of old countries, and already nearing maturity
when they began their separate lives. They are not at the beginning of
two thousand years of slow development, such as we have passed through,
but at the end of it, with us, and sometimes even a little ahead of us.
It is therefore natural and inevitable that, in a matter in which we are
moving rapidly, Massachusetts and Ontario and New South Wales and New
Zealand should have moved still more rapidly, so rapidly indeed, that
they have themselves failed to perceive that their real natural increase
and the manner in which it is attained place them in this matter at the
van of civilization. These things are, however, only learnt slowly. We
may be sure that the fundamental and complex character of the phenomena
will never be obvious to our fussy little politicians, so apt to
advocate panaceas which have effects quite opposite to those they
desire. But, whatever politicians may wish to do or to leave undone, it
is well to remember that, of the various ideals the world holds, there
are some that lie on the path of our social progress, and others that do
not there lie. We may properly exercise such wisdom as we possess by
utilizing the ideals which are before us, serenely neglecting many
others which however precious they may once have seemed, no longer form
part of the stage of civilization we are now moving towards