insignificant helpless creature without weight, power or dignity. Other animals could beat him swimming, diving, flying, running, fighting. There was only one thing he could do tolerably well and that was to climb a tree. That was his capital, his stock in trade as one might say, for it developed his hands and quickened his senses. Nature took this unprepossessing, unpromising creature, educated and developed him in her stern school and by her untender methods, put brains into him, civilized him and fitted him to control the world and finally to govern himself. This last lesson he has not yet perfectly mastered, but he is learning more of it every day. Progress, say they, never takes a back track. The pessimistic theory that nature’s plan is to let every fellow look out for himself and the devil take the hindmost, is no longer true. The race has passed that place and the new ideal is; every fellow for all the rest, and no one left behind. Until this is practically realized they say the race will not have fulfilled its destiny, and retreat is impossible. Moreover it is not necessary; for the new departure is after all as natural as the old way, and is in fact only a continuation of it; a turn in the road as it were; and it may quite as well be depended upon to rectify all the difficulties of its own creation. If the principle of mutual succor, sympathy and assistance leads to over population, the same principle must furnish the remedy. The optimists admit the contention of the pessimists that this trouble is looming up, and the philosophers of all schools are beginning to feel serious. They are discussing such figures as we had before us a few moments ago and endeavoring to fix the date at which a halt will have to be called, and the means devised by which it is to be accomplished. Some say the population is dense enough now. Others point out that with the increased means of subsistence there need not be anything uncomfortable in a population of 12,000,000,000 which they estimate will not be reached till 2070, or 70 years from the present (A. D. 2000.) And they are hopeful enough to believe that by that time, human wit will have discovered some way of controlling population without violence to human happiness. All agree that if society is to be maintained on the present scale it is high time to settle the manner in which the great question of population is to be met and handled. It is the most difficult question that has ever demanded human attention.