The author of the above-quoted paragraphs thus attributes the decline both of the birth-rate and of the Protestant Churches to the general adoption of artificial birth control. With that explanation I disagree, because it puts the horse behind the cart. When the Protestant faith was strong the birth-rate of this country was as high as that of Catholic lands. The Protestant Churches have now been overshadowed by a rebirth of Rationalism, a growth for which they themselves prepared the soil: and diminished fertility is the natural product of a civilisation tending towards materialism. Although the practice of artificial birth control must obviously contribute towards a falling birth-rate, it is neither the only nor the ultimate cause of the decline. The ultimate causes of a falling birth-rate are more complex, and the decline of a community is but the physical expression of a moral change. That is my thesis. [Footnote 35: _Evening Standard_, October 12, 1921.] [Footnote 36: "The Declining Birth-rate" in _The Month_, August 1916, p. 157, reprinted by C.T.S. Price 2_d_.] [Footnote 37: "Religious Belief as affecting the Growth of Population," _The Hibbert Journal_, October, 1914, p. 144.] [Footnote 38: The Secretary of the Malthusian League. Vide _The Declining Birth-rate_, 1916, p. 99.] [Footnote 39: _The Month_, August 1916, p. 157, C.T.S.: 2_d_.] [Footnote 40: _The Hibbert Journal_, October 1914, p. 147.] [Footnote 41: _The Hibbert Journal_, October 1914, p. 150.] [Footnote 42: "Race-suicide and Dr. Bell," _America_, October 29, 1921, p. 31.] [Footnote 43: _Daily Chronicle_, April 25, 1910.] [Footnote 44: _Eighty-second Annual Report of the Registrar-General of Births, Deaths, and Marriages in England and Wales_, 1919, p. 89.] [Footnote 45: Ibid., p. xxvi.] [Footnote 46: _The Hibbert Journal_, October 1914, p. 141.] [Footnote 47: _The Family and the Nation_, 1909, pp. 139, 142.] [Footnote 48: Quoted in _Universe_, October 22, 1921.] [Footnote 49: Charles S. Devas, _Political Economy_, 2nd edition, 1901, p. 193.] [Footnote 50: Meyrick Booth, B. Sc., Ph.D., _The Hibbert Journal_, October 1914, pp. 142 and 152.] CHAPTER V IS THERE A NATURAL LAW REGULATING THE PROPORTION OF BIRTHS AND DEATHS? Section 1. THE THEORY OF THOMAS DOUBLEDAY REVIVED In 1837 Thomas Doubleday [51] maintained that the rising birth-rate of his own time was closely connected with the fall in the standard of living, and his argument implied that, in order to check the excessive birth-rate, it was necessary to improve the condition of the mass of the people. Four years later he published _The True Law of Population_, wherein he stated that when the existence of a species is endangered--