IX THE REGULATION OF NUMBERS AMONG PRIMITIVE RACES (continued 2)

239Lastly it may be recalled that there are many indications that fecundity is somewhat less among these races than among modern races. However this may be, it has always to be remembered that the power of increase is nevertheless huge. It has been, for instance, calculated that between the years 1906 and 1911 the population of the world was increasing at such a rate that it would double itself in about sixty years. At this rate of increase the estimated population of the world in 1914—namely, 1,694,000,000—would be produced by the progeny of a single pair in 1,782 years.^[1285] Furthermore, this is occurring under conditions in which the increase is everywhere obviously and severely checked in very many ways; therefore, even if the fecundity among these races is less than among civilized races, it must not be thought that there is thereby brought about any considerable alleviation of the problem as to how numbers should be controlled.

13. We have now to ask how far the conclusions to which we have come regarding primitive races are applicable to prehistoric races. In the first place, they are clearly only applicable to races among whom social organization has become established; for it is only when men begin to reap the advantages of co-operation that the conception of the optimum number arises. As we have seen, it is not possible to say when primitive social organization arose. It must certainly have been present in the Upper Palaeolithic; the evidence of the presence of a large body of tradition is otherwise incomprehensible. As suggested, it may very well be that we should look for the origin of social organization in the Lower Palaeolithic. Among the Tasmanians, whose skill was not much in advance of that of Acheulean man, there was a primitive form of social organization. Nevertheless, wherever the beginnings of social organization are to be placed, we must suppose that a long period of time elapsed before it assumed that rigid form characteristic of primitive races. Giving all due weight to this consideration, we must assume that in, and perhaps before, the Upper Palaeolithic era the position with regard to numbers was in all essentials similar to that among primitive races. It is not uncommon to meet with statements to the effect that man was a wanderer until he began to practise agriculture. This is a mistake if it implies that after social organization had arisen definite areas for different groups of 240men were not recognized. There can be no direct proof of this; but the fact that, wherever we look, absolutely without exception we find among all primitive races the recognition and careful maintenance of such areas, just as much among hunting and fishing as among agricultural races, must lead us to suppose that among the more skilled hunters of pre-history similar conditions normally obtained. It is altogether unreasonable and without foundation to suppose that the recognition of areas is a development subsequent to the separation of primitive races from the main line of social evolution. If then the recognition of areas, which probably arose with the development of social organization, was a characteristic of the later prehistoric races, we are led to conclude that the desirability of attaining to and maintaining the optimum number must have had the same consequences as among primitive races. It must, in other words, have resulted in the practice of infanticide, of abortion, or of abstention from intercourse. For there is no reason to assume that the factors bearing upon fertility and elimination reached a considerably greater intensity than among primitive races. We have, however, no reason to assume that any one of these habits was practised rather than another, for there is, as we have seen, no correlation between these factors and stages in economic development. All that we assume is that in one way or another adjustment was brought about, and in corroboration of this we may note, as will be pointed out in the next chapter, that as prehistoric races emerge into the light of history there is abundant evidence of the practice by them of one or other of these customs.

14. Lastly we may ask how we are to view the change from the conditions under which the pre-human ancestor must have lived to the conditions which we have found reason to attribute to prehistoric races. The conditions to which species in a state of nature are subjected, and to which therefore we assume the pre-human ancestor to have been subject, were described in the second chapter. We found that the fecundity of any species was connected with the sum of all the unavoidable dangers as we called them to which the young of the species are exposed. A limit is set to the development of the strength of fecundity beyond a certain point by the fact that it cannot be to the advantage of any species that its “fecundity should increase considerably beyond the point which ensures the survival of the 241species, as such an increase would intensify the struggle between the members of the species—this intensification of the struggle not bringing any corresponding advantages.”

We are ignorant with regard not only to the form of the pre-human ancestor, but also with regard to the conditions under which he lived. We must suppose, however, that his fecundity, like that of any other species in a state of nature, was of a strength that enabled a sufficient proportion of his offspring to survive the unavoidable dangers. As we have seen, that which marks the setting out of man on the path which led to the dominion over all other species was the growth of his intellect. The most obvious consequence of this increase in intellectual power must have been to enable man to protect himself against many of these dangers. We do not know to what dangers he was subject, but they must in all probability have been many and serious in view of his relatively poor equipment with means of defence. Yet we have only to look at the Tasmanians to find that, when a degree of skill had been reached not far superior to that of Lower Palaeolithic man, he had freed himself from most of these dangers. Parasites were not then, so far as we can tell, a serious menace, and against the attacks of other species he could defend himself with almost complete success. Whether his fecundity had come to differ from that of the pre-human ancestor by that time we cannot tell; in any case the fecundity of prehistoric man was evidently in the main a legacy of the pre-human ancestor—a degree of fecundity that had been evolved in the face of quite other conditions. Since the time of prehistoric man fecundity has increased—this increase being apparently in the main in the nature of a modification due to changed conditions of life.

It appears that we must regard the growth of intellect as having enabled man to avoid the serious consequences which a fecundity in excess of that necessary to ensure survival would otherwise have brought about. Excessive fecundity, not therefore being a disadvantage, was not reduced by selection. It must be remembered that human fecundity is only relatively excessive; actually man is a slow-breeding animal, and when we speak of this relatively excessive fecundity, we are not to think of such a degree of fecundity as would occupy so prominent a place among the bodily functions as to render man less adaptive than he would have been had it been less. Fecundity, in other 242words, could only have become disadvantageous had it led to greatly increased competition among the members of the species without any corresponding advantage. This might perhaps have happened, had not the growth of the intellect indirectly produced new causes of elimination and intensified some of the formerly existing factors. Thus the change in food and in the mode of life was evidently productive of a higher infant mortality; such changes were due to the growth of the intellect, and the higher mortality consequent upon them, if not, as is possible, an actual advantage, was at least countenanced by natural selection.^[1286] Such changes therefore were, other things being equal, tolerated, as were also abstention from intercourse due to taboos, pre-puberty intercourse, prolonged lactation, and so on. The practices of abortion and infanticide together with prolonged abstention from intercourse—also due to the intellect—enabled man completely to escape any disadvantages which might have arisen from his relatively excessive fecundity—the reserve, so to speak, of fecundity being possibly an advantage.

In some such manner as this it seems that we have to regard the present position of man with reference to fecundity. The strength of fecundity is in the main a legacy from ancestors who were subject to wholly different conditions. It is excessive relatively to his present needs; this excess has, however, not been a disadvantage; for the consequences which might have been deleterious have been avoided owing indirectly to the modifications of the conditions of life and directly to the rise of certain customs all ultimately traceable to the growth of the intellect.

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