[6] Similar results appear to follow in China where also the birth-rate is very high and the mortality very great. It is stated that physical development is much inferior and pathological defects more numerous among Chinese as compared with American students. (_New York Medical Journal_, Nov. 14th, 1914, p. 978.) The bad conditions which produce death in the weakest produce deterioration in the survivors. [7] The law is thus laid down by P. Leroy-Beaulieu (_La Question de la Population_, 1913, p. 233): "The first degree of prosperity in a rude population with few needs develops prolificness; a later degree of prosperity, accompanied by all the feelings and ideas stimulated by the development of education and a democratic environment, leads to a gradual reduction of prolificness." [8] This is too often forgotten. Birth control is a natural process, and though in civilised men, endowed with high intelligence, it necessarily works in some measure voluntarily and deliberately, it is probable that it still also works, as in the evolution of the lower animals, to some extent automatically. Sir Shirley Murphy (_Lancet_, Aug. 10th, 1912), while admitting that intentional restriction has been operative, remarks: "It does not appear to me that there is any more reason for ignoring the likelihood that Nature has been largely concerned in the reduction of births than for ignoring the effects of Nature in reducing the death-rate. The decline in both has points of resemblance. Both have been widely manifest over Europe, both have in the main declined in the period of 1871-1880, and indeed both appear to be behaving in like manner." [9] I do not overlook the fact that the artificial clothing of primitive man is in its origin mainly ornament, having myself insisted on that fact in discussing this point in "The Evolution of Modesty" (_Studies in the Psychology of Sex_, Vol. I.). It is to be remembered that, in animals--and very conspicuously, for instance, in birds--natural clothing is also largely ornament of secondary sexual significance. [10] At the end of the eighteenth century there were in France four children on the average to a family; a movement of rapid increase in the population reached its climax in 1846; by 1860 the average number of children to a family had slowly fallen to but little over three. Broca, writing in 1867 ("Sur la Pretendue Degenerescence de la Population Francaise"), mentioned that the slow fall in the birth-rate was only slightly due to prudent calculation and mainly to more general causes such as delay in marriage. [11] Havelock Ellis, _Studies in the Psychology of Sex_, Vol. VI., "Sex in Relation to Society," Ch. XI., The Art of Love. [12] The exact results are presented by F. Boas (abstract of Report on _Changes in Bodily Form of Descendants of Immigrants_, Washington, 1911, p. 57), who concludes that "the physical development of children, as measured by stature, is the better the smaller the family."