It means necessarily and obviously that the effective means of multiplication is not a high birth-rate but a low death-rate. It is a necessary inference from the paradox in question that the infant death-rate and the general death-rate in man are the lowest anywhere to be found. Producing fewer young he alone multiplies.[20] It follows that a smaller proportion of those young must die. Unless it is supposed by bishops and others, then, that a peculiar value attaches to the production of a baby shortly to be buried, the suggestion evidently is the same as that to which every humanitarian and social and patriotic impulse guides us, namely, the reduction of the death-rate and especially the infant mortality. This is the true way in which to insure the more rapid multiplication of man, if that be desired. I believe it is not to be desired, but in any case the reduction of the death-rate and especially of the infant mortality is a worthy and necessary end in itself, and need not inevitably lead to our undue multiplication provided that the birth-rate falls. Hence the eugenists and the Episcopal Bench may join hands so far as the reduction of the death-rate is concerned, and the only persons with whom a practical quarrel remains are those who--in effect--applaud the mother who boasts that she has buried twelve. =The facts of human multiplication.=--Human population continues to increase notwithstanding any changes in the birth-rate. This fact remains true, as shown by the latest obtainable figures. It should be one of the dogmas never absent from the foreground of the statesman's mind. Apparently nothing, however, will induce us to take this little forethought. When we build a bridge across the Thames, we ignore it; when we widen a bridge we ignore it likewise. When we make a new street we ignore it; when we build railways and railway stations we ignore it--excusably, perhaps, in this case; when we build hospitals we ignore it: four times out of five there is no room for the addition of a single ward in time to come. We have not yet even learnt, as they are learning in America and Germany, how to acquire the outlying lands of cities for the public possession, so that they may be properly employed as the city grows. The man who builds himself a villa on the outskirts of a city, ignores it, and is staggered by it in ten years. The lover of nature and the country ignores it: “Just look at this,” he says, “this was in the country when first I knew it, look at these horrible rows of villas!” The only possible reply to such a person is simply, “Well, my dear sir, what do you propose? General infanticide?” Most important of all, this fact, that, to take the case of Great Britain, some half million babies are born every year in excess over the number of all who die at all ages, is forgotten by our statesmen--or rather by our politicians. It could, of course, not be forgotten by a statesman.