civilisation at present is to make machines what they ought to be, the
slaves, instead of the masters of men; and if civilisation fails at the
task, then without doubt it and its makers will go down to a common
destruction. It is a task inextricably bound up with the task of moulding
the human race for which birth-control is the elected instrument. Indeed
they are but two aspects of the same task. We have to accept the rugged
fact that every step to render more nearly perfect the mechanical side of
life correspondingly abolishes the need for men. Thus it is calculated
to-day that whenever, in accordance with a growing tendency, coal is
superseded by oil in industry two men are enabled to do the work of
twelve. That is merely typical of what is taking place generally in our
modern system of civilisation. Everywhere a small number of men are being
enabled to replace a large number of men. Not to avoid looking ahead, we
may say that of every twelve millions of our population, ten millions will
be unwanted. Let them do something else! we cheerfully exclaim. But what?
No doubt there are always art and science, infinite in their possibilities
for joy and enlightenment, infinite also, as we know, in their
possibilities of mischief and shallowness and boredom. Let it only be true
science and great art, and one man is better than ten millions. To say
that is only to echo unconsciously the ancient saying of Heraclitus, "One
is ten thousand if he be the best."

[31] Professor E.M. East, a distinguished biologist and lately President
of the American Society of Naturalists (_Nature_, 23 Sept., 1920), has
estimated that, for all the fall in the birth-rate, the present rate of
increase in the population of the world, chiefly of whites, who are
increasing most rapidly, will, in the lives of our grandchildren, lead
to a struggle for existence more terrible than imagination can conceive.

[32] This has been set forth with admirable lucidity and wealth of
illustration by Dr. Austin Freeman in his _Social Decay and
Regeneration_ (1921), already mentioned.

The vistas that are opened up when we realise the direction in which the
human race is travelling may seem to be endless; and so in a sense they
are. Man has replaced the gods he once dreamed of; he has found that he is
himself a god, who, however realistic he seeks to make his philosophy,
himself created the world as he sees it and now has even acquired the
power of creating himself,