The references already made to the work of Sir William Crookes will suffice to show that the teaching of Malthus is of practical importance to us to-day, and not least to the population of Great Britain. I am tempted to quote the actual case in this connection of a young student of biology who applied for Malthus's book at one of the greatest official libraries in this country. He was looked at as a shameless young rascal, and the librarian curtly said, “We have no books of that kind here.” I commend this exquisite instance of misapplied and perfectly ignorant British prudery to Mr. Bernard Shaw: not even he could imagine anything to surpass it. No more impeccably decent book than this of “Parson Malthus” has ever been written, and I have no adequate comment for the fact that its nature and contents were not merely wholly unknown but grossly misimagined by this responsible official, and that it could not be obtained in the great library of science in question. We pass in the following chapter to the momentous discovery of Herbert Spencer that the great truth seen by Malthus was not a whole but a half-truth, and that there is a compensating principle, which is at once a source of inspiration and of difficulty to the eugenist. It is in general the principle that as life ascends it becomes less prolific, and its consequences are infinitely more vast than the phrase at first suggests. Had this principle been discovered by a Continental thinker or by a member of a British University instead of by a man who never passed an examination, it would not now need the discussion which we shall have to give it. CHAPTER VI THE GROWTH OF INDIVIDUALITY