Social environment and moral progress / by Alfred Russel Wallace.
- Alfred Russel Wallace
- Date:
- 1913
Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)
Credit: Social environment and moral progress / by Alfred Russel Wallace. Source: Wellcome Collection.
155/180 page 143
![XVI] Progress Through Selection large families, while the most rapid in¬ crease occurs in those classes which are engaged in healthy manual labour. But a law founded on such a broad physiological basis of observation is sure to continue in action, and we may there¬ fore feel certain that as the intellectual level of the whole race is raised by general culture and physical health, the law of diminishing fertility will act, and will tend in the remote future to bring about an exact balance between the rate of increase and that of mortality. A more immediate and effective check to rapid increase of population will, how¬ ever, be brought about by the social reforms already suggested. When poverty is abolished and neither economic nor social advantages will be gained by early marriage, there can be no doubt it will be generally deferred to a later age. Still more effective will be the extension of the period of education or training for the whole population for several years longer than at present, together with the growth of public opinion against all marriages between per¬ sons who have not yet begun the serious work of life. It would also be an essential part of education to inculcate the delay of 143](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b18022121_0156.JP2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
