Munich
souls. The difficulty of feeding this army of new citizens is bound to grow from year to year, and finally to end in catastrophe, unless ways and means are found in time to avert the danger of starvation.
There were four ways of avoiding this fearful development for the future.
1. On the French model, the increase in births could be artificially limited, and over-population thus avoided.
It is perfectly true that in times of great distress or bad climatic conditions or a poor crop yield, Nature herself takes steps to limit the increase of population in certain countries or races; but she does it both wisely and ruthlessly. She does nothing to destroy reproductivity as such, but does prevent the survival of what is reproduced, by exposing the new generation to such trials and privations that all the weaker and less healthy are forced to return to the womb of the eternally Unknown. Everything that Nature allows to survive the rigors of existence is a thousand times tested, is hard, and well fitted to go on propagating, so that the thoroughgoing winnowing may start anew. By thus brutally proceeding against the individual, and recalling him to herself instantly if he is not equal to the storms of life, she keeps the race and species strong, even pushes them to supreme achievement.
The reduction of numbers is thus a strengthening of the individual, and consequently in the end an improvement in the species.
It is otherwise when man begins to undertake a limitation of his own number. He is not carved from the granite of Nature, but is “humane.” He knows better than the cruel Queen of all wisdom. He limits not the survival of the individual, but reproduction itself. He sees himself always, and never the race; he believes this road is more human and better justified than its opposite.
But unfortunately the results as well are reversed: Nature, while allowing free propagation, puts a severe test upon survival, choosing the best among a great number of individual creatures
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