Chapter I: Social Reforms Proposed for the Hypothetical Purpose of Increasing

NATALITY.--Nobody has ever shown that the emancipation of woman, selection in paternity, the suppression of divorce, or, the contrary, laws facilitating divorce, would augment natality. Nobody has ever given a proof, or the beginning of a proof, in support of these fancies.

Would socialistic reforms leading to a diminution of the share of capital, and a corresponding increase of the share of labor, have any effect upon natality? I can not pronounce upon this question, because I have not sufficient data; nevertheless, the remuneration of capital has not ceased to diminish since the beginning of the century--we may even estimate that it has diminished nearly one half, for the nominal interest on money has fallen from five to three per cent. This has not prevented natality from decreasing in our country. Would it be augmented if capital should come to have no remuneration at all? I have not examined this difficult and very hypothetical question, for, if such a thing should happen, it could be only in an extremely remote future. But the supreme struggle of which our country has always to think will have taken place long before that.

The revival of religious ideas, if it should come about, might have some effect on natality. Demographic studies have shown how great an influence religion has on habits and on phenomena of moral pathology (on the frequency of suicides, for example), and prove that men put the prescriptions of their religion into practice more than one would believe. All religions direct man, more or less imperatively, to have as numerous a posterity as possible. There may therefore exist a relation between natality and the degree of sincerity of religious convictions. But it is manifest that, whatever we may do, we can not change our age nor prevent its growing more and more incredulous.