Munich
that the demands made upon life generally increase even faster than the population. People’s requirements for food and clothing grow from year to year, and even now, for instance, they bear no relation to the needs of our forefathers say a hundred years ago. In other words it is a mistaken belief that every increase in productivity makes possible an increase in population. No: this is true to only a certain extent, since at least part of the increased production of the soil is used up to satisfy men’s increased requirements. But even with the greatest self-denial on the one hand and the most assiduous industry on the other, a limit is still bound to come, set by the soil itself. All the assiduity in the world can wring no more out of it; and then, even if somewhat postponed, disaster again approaches. For a time starvation will recur only occasionally, with crop failures and the like. As the number of the people increases, it will recur oftener and oftener, so that at last it is absent only when rare bumper crops fill the graneries. Finally the time comes when the distress can no longer be alleviated, even then, and starvation is the eternal companion of the people. Now Nature must come to the rescue again, and make a selection among those she has chosen to live; or else man helps himself again—that is, he resorts to artificial restriction of his increase, with all the grave consequences for race and species already described.
It may still be objected that sooner or later, after all, this future awaits the whole of humanity, so that naturally no single people can escape it.
At first glance, this is absolutely true. Nevertheless we must consider the following:
Some day the impossibility of balancing the fertility of the soil with the ever-increasing population will of course compel all mankind to stop increasing the human race, and either to let Nature decide or to strike the necessary balance by self-help if possible (but then by a method better than that of today). But this will hold for every people, while at present only those races are thus distressed which no longer have the strength and energy to assure themselves of the land they require in this
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