(2) There has been a great development of humanitarian sentiment, one result of which has been the breaking down of class-barriers and the perfecting of the social ladder; at the same time it has produced such changes of our laws and institutions as tend in an ever increasing degree to lighten the economic burdens of the poor and to consummate by social organisation the abolition of natural selection; that is to say, these changes are putting a stop to the repression by natural laws of the multiplication of the less fit, those least well endowed mentally and physically. The recent great decline of infant mortality is one evidence of this. (3) The influence of religion and custom has weakened, and men are more disposed to adopt the naturalistic point of view, to believe that this life is not a mere preparation for an infinitely longer life elsewhere, but that it is all they can certainly reckon upon and, therefore, is to be made the most of; while at the same time they are oppressed by the severity of the economic competition and by a sense of the lack of any ultimate purpose, end, or sanction of human effort. The combined result of these three changes is a strong tendency to reverse the operation by which nature has secured the evolution of higher types of mind—namely, by breeding in the main from the higher types in each generation. We see a tendency for the population to be renewed in each generation preponderantly from the mentally inferior elements, those whose outlook hardly extends beyond the immediate future and who have not learnt to demand for themselves and their children favoured positions in the great game of life. The effects of these three changes operate in the following manner. The rate of reproduction, the birth rate, of nearly all civilised countries is falling rapidly (although the death rate also falls). This diminution of rate of reproduction is due to increase of celibacy, abstention from marriage, to increase of late marriage, and to voluntary restriction of the number of the family in marriage.