[115] It has, further, been frequently denied that Neo-Malthusian practices can affect Roman Catholic countries, since the Church is precluded from approving of them. That is true. But it is also true that, as Lagneau long since pointed out, the Protestants of Europe have increased at more than double the annual rate of the Catholics, though this relationship has now ceased to be exact. Dumont states (_Depopulation et Civilisation_, chap. XVIII) that there is not the slightest reason to suppose that (apart from the question of poverty) the faithful have more children than the irreligious; moreover, in dealing with its more educated members, it is not the policy of the Church to make indiscreet inquiries (see Havelock Ellis, _Studies in the Psychology of Sex_, Vol. VI, "Sex in Relation to Society," p. 590). A Catholic bishop is reported to have warned his clergy against referring in their Lent sermons to the voluntary restriction of conception, remarking that an excess of rigour in this matter would cause the Church to lose half her flock. The fall in the birth-rate is as marked in Catholic as in Protestant countries; the Catholic communities in which this is not the case are few, and placed in exceptional circumstances. It must be remembered, moreover, that the Church enjoins celibacy on its clergy, and that celibacy is practically a Malthusian method. It is not easy while preaching practical Malthusianism to the clergy to spend much fervour in preaching against practical Neo-Malthusianism to the laity. [116] McLean, "The Declining Birth-rate in Australia," _International Medical Journal of Australasia_, 1904. [117] Thus in France the low birth-rate is associated with a high infantile death-rate, which has not yet been appreciably influenced by the movement of puericulture in France. In England also, at the end of the last century, the declining birth-rate was accompanied by a rising infantile death-rate, which is now, however, declining under the influence of greater care of child-life. [118] Sidney Webb, _Times_, October 11 and 16, 1906; also _Popular Science Monthly_, 1906, p. 526. [119] It is important to remember the distinction between "fecundity" and "fertility." A woman who has one child has proved that she is fecund, but has not proved that she is fertile. A woman with six children has proved that she is not only fecund but fertile. [120] They have been worked out by C.J. Lewis and J. Norman Lewis, _Natality and Fecundity_, 1905. [121] Newsholme and Stevenson, _op. cit._; Rubin and Westergaard, _Statistik der Ehen_, 1890, p. 95. [122] D. Heron, "On the Relation of Fertility in Man to Social Status," _Drapers' Company Research Memoirs_, No. 1, 1906.