=Their action in man.=--Within the human species the laws of multiplication hold. It is still worth while, after half a century, to quote Spencer's remark as to infertility in women due to mental labour carried to excess--“most of the flat-chested girls who survive their high-pressure education are incompetent to bear a well-developed infant and to supply it with the natural food for the natural period.” On all hands people with opened eyes are rightly urging this truth upon us to-day. In the United States the so-called higher education of girls has been proved in effect to sterilise them--and these the flower of the nation's girlhood, and therefore, rightly, the very elect for motherhood. Here is simply an instance of the Spencerian principle in its most unfortunate misdirection by man. Before leaving Spencer, we must refer briefly to the predictions, based upon the foregoing principles, with which he concluded his great work. The further evolution of man, he declares, must take mainly the direction of a higher intellectual and emotional development. Hitherto, and even to-day, pressure of population is the original cause of human competition, application, discipline, expenditure of energy--and one may add, the possibility of continued selection. Excess of fertility, then, says Spencer, is the cause of man's evolution, but “man's further evolution itself necessitates a decline in his fertility.” The future progress of civilisation will be accompanied by increased development of individuality, emotional and intellectual. As Spencer observes, this does not necessarily mean a mentally laborious life, for as mental activity “gradually becomes organic, it will become spontaneous and pleasurable.” Finally, the necessary antagonism between individuality and parenthood ensures the ultimate attainment of the highest form of the maintenance of the race--“... _a form in which the amount of life shall be the greatest possible, and the births and deaths the fewest possible_.” * * * * *