Neo-Malthusianism, with its power of subjugating the law of population and deferring parentage, is a new key to the social position, and neo-Malthusian practice has already taken root in British society. The discovery is of vast significance, so great are its latent possibilities of promoting universal happiness. But as long as reproduction of human physical life is left to haphazard, and the rule of private, personal interests alone, without any honourable recognition, intelligent guidance, or moral and economic support, the immediate effect on national life is, and will continue to be, the very reverse of beneficial. Matthew Arnold’s exhortation in respect of the slum children was: “We must let conscience play freely and simply upon the facts of the case; we must listen to what it tells us of the intelligible law of things as concerns these children, and what it tells us is that a man’s children are not really sent any more than the pictures upon his walls or the horses in his stable are sent, and that to bring people into the world when one cannot afford to keep them and oneself decently, or to bring more of them into the world than one can afford to keep thus, is by no means an accomplishment of the Divine Will or a fulfilment of nature’s simplest laws, but is contrary to reason and the will of God.” (_Culture and Anarchy_, p. 246.) This remonstrance addressed to the rich (these alone have pictures on their walls and horses in their stables) may have had some effect, for certain it is that in the upper classes artificial checks to conception are now widely used, while slum children show no tendency to proportionately diminish in number. Individuals whose standard of living is high, and whose pecuniary means are small, or who are thoughtful, intelligent, prudent, either refrain from marriage, or, marrying, check propagation. The natural result is that children of the comparatively superior types are becoming numerically weaker than children of the thoughtless, reckless members of society who exercise their reproductive powers to the utmost. It is supremely important that we should recognize how parentage bears upon human life and happiness in far wider relations than either sexual union alone or marriage alone. Maintenance of species has hitherto been accomplished at an enormous sacrifice of individual life. The requirement that there shall arise a full number of adults in successive generations is fulfilled by means which subordinate the existing and next succeeding members of the species in various degrees. (See Herbert Spencer’s _Principles of Sociology_, vol. i. p. 621.)