Chapter CVI: Section CCXLIV

HISTORY OF POPULATION.--UNCIVILIZED TIMES.

In the case of those wild tribes which can only use the forces of nature by way of occupation, the small extent of the field of food is filled up by even a very sparse population. And the principal means by which population is there limited are the following: the overburthening and ill treatment of the women,[244-1] by which the simultaneous rearing of several small children is rendered impossible;[244-2] the inordinately long time that children are kept at the breast;[244-3] the wide-spread practice of abortion;[244-4] numerous cases of murder, especially of the old and weak;[244-5] everlasting war carried on by hunting nations to extend their hunting territory, found in conjunction with cannibalism in many tribes.[244-6] Besides, nations of hunters are frequently decimated by famine and pestilence, the latter generally a consequence of never-ending alternation between gluttony and famine.[244-7]

Most negro nations live in such a state of legal insecurity that it is impossible for a higher civilization with its attendant increase of the means of subsistence to take root among them. At the same time, their sexual impulses are very strong.[244-8] Here the slave-trade constituted the chief preventive of over-population. If this traffic were suppressed simply and no care taken through the instrumentality of commerce and of missions to improve the moral and economical condition of the negroes, the only probable but questionable gain would be that the prisoners made in the numberless wars generated by famine would be murdered instead of being sold.

Nomadic races, with their universal chivalry, are wont to treat their women well enough to enable them bear children without any great hardship.[244-9] But the mere use of natural pasturage can never be carried to great intensity. The transition to agriculture with its greater yield of food but with the diminished freedom by which it is accompanied is a thing to which these warlike men are so averse that it directs the surplus population by the way of emigration into neighboring civilized countries, where they either obtain victory, booty and supremacy, or are rapidly subjugated. Such migrations are a standing chapter in the history of all Asiatic kingdoms; they for a long time disturb declining civilized states, finally conquering them, and begin the same cycle in the new kingdom.[244-10] Where nomadic races see themselves cut off from such migrations their marriages are wont to be unfruitful.[244-11]

[Footnote 244-1: In New Holland they are beaten by their
husbands even on the day of their confinement. Their heads
are sometimes covered with countless scars. _Collins_ says
that for mere pity one might wish a young woman there death
rather than marriage. (Account of N. S. Wales, 560 ff.)
South American Indian women actually kill their daughters,
with a view of improving the condition of women. (_Azara_,
Reisen in S. Amerika, II, 63.) How the women among the
aboriginal inhabitants of North America were oppressed is
best illustrated by the absence of ornaments among the
women, while the men were very gaudily decked, and carried
small hand-mirrors with them. (_Prinz Neuwied_, N. A. Reise,
II, 108 seq.) The early decay of female beauty among all
barbarous nations is related to the ill-treatment they
receive.]

[Footnote 244-2: The custom of killing one of twins
immediately after birth or of burying a child at the breast
with its mother, prevails extensively among savage nations.
On New Holland, see _Collins_, 362; on North America,
Lettres édifiantes, IX, 140; on the Hottentots, _Kolb_, I,
144.]

[Footnote 244-3: In many Indian tribes, children are kept at
the breast until their fifth year. (_Klemm_,
Kulturgeschichte I, 236; II, 85.) Among the Greenlanders,
until the third or fourth year (_Klemm_, I, 208); among the
Laplanders and Tonguses, likewise (_Klemm_, III, 57); among
the Mongols and Kalmucks, longer yet. (_Klemm_, III, 171.)]

[Footnote 244-4: The New Hollanders have a special word to
express the killing of the foetus by pressure.
(_Collins._) Among certain of the Brazilian tribes, this is
performed by every woman until her 30th year; and in many
more the custom prevails for a woman when she becomes
pregnant to fast, or to be frequently bled. (_Spix und
Martius_, Reise, I, 261.) Compare _Azara._, II, 79.]

[Footnote 244-5: On the Bushmen, see _Barrow_, Journey in
Africa, 379 ff.; on the Hottentots, among whom even the
wealthy aged are killed by exposure, see _Kolb_, Caput bonæ
Spei, 1719, I, 321; on the Scandinavian, old Germans,
Wendes, Prussians, _Grimm_, D. Rechtsalterthümer, 486 ff.;
on the most ancient Romans, _Cicero_, pro Rosc. Amer, 35,
and Festus v. Depontani, Sexagenarios; on Ceos, _Strabo_, X,
486; on the ancient Indians, _Herodot._, III, 38, 99; on the
Massagetes, _Herodot._, I, 216; on the Caspians, _Strabo_,
XI, 517, 520. Touching picture of an old man abandoned in
the desert, unable to follow his tribe compelled to emigrate
for want of food: _Catlin_, N. American Indians, I, 216 ff.
We here see how the killing of helpless old people may be
considered a blessing among many nations. Death is also
sometimes desired by reason of superstition. For instance,
the Figians think that after death they will continue to
live of the same age as that at which they died.
(_Williams_, Figi and the Figians, I, 183.) The Germans who
died of disease did not get to Walhalla! (_W. Wackernagel_,
Kl. Schriften, I, 16.)]

[Footnote 244-6: On the frightful cannibalism practiced on
the upper Nile, see _Schweinfurth_ in _Petermann's_ geogr.
Mettheilungen, IV, 138, seq. Australian women seldom outlive
their 30th year. _Lubbock_, Prehistoric Times, 449. Many are
eaten by the men as soon as they begin to get old.
(Transactions of the Ethnolog. Society, New Series, III,
248.) A chief of Figi Islands who died recently had eaten
872 men in his lifetime. _Lawry_, Visit to the Friendly and
Fejee Islands, 1850. Even the more highly civilized Mexicans
had preserved this abomination. According to _Gomara_,
Cronica de la N. Espana, 229, there were here from 20,000 to
25,000 human sacrifices a year; according to _Torquemada_,
Indiana, VII, 21, even 20,000 children a year. _B. Diaz_, on
the other hand, puts the number down at 2,500 only. Compare
_Klemm_, Kulturgeschichte, V, 103, 207, 216.]

[Footnote 244-7: The usual coldness, so much spoken of, of
the Indians, seems to have an economic rather than a
physiological cause. At least, it has also been observed
among the Hottentots. (_Levillant_, Voyage, I, 12 seq.), and
under favorable economic conditions the Indians have
sometimes increased very rapidly. (Lettres édifiantes, VIII,
243.) Whether the practice in vogue among the Botocuds to
carry the organ of generation continually in a rather narrow
envelope, or that among the Patachos of lacing the foreskin
with the tendrils of a plant, is not a "preventive check,"
quære. Compare _Prinz Neuwied_, Bras. Reise, II, 10; I,
226.]

[Footnote 244-8: On the gold coast, people become fathers in
their 12th year even, and mothers at 10. (_Ritter_,
Erdkunde, I, 313.) In the whole of the Soudan the climate is
so exciting that the intercourse of the sexes is said to be
a "physical necessity," and an unmarried man of eighteen is
universally despised. But, indeed, the individual is little
valued in Africa, on account of the great prolificacy of the
African race. (_Ritter_, I, 385.)]

[Footnote 244-9: _Herodot._, IV, 26.]

[Footnote 244-10: Compare _Machiavelli_, at the beginning of
his Istoria Fiorentina. The migration of the Germani is
accounted for simply by the family and marriage relations of
the Germans, which necessarily favored prolificacy: _Severa
matrimonia ... singulis uxoribus contenti sunt ... septae
pudicitia ... paucissima adulteria ... publicatae pudicitiae
nulla venia ... nemo vitia ridet ... numerum liberorum
finire, flagitium habetur ... sua quemque mater uberibus
alit ... sera juverum Venus eoque inexhausta pubertas ...
quanto plus propinquorum, tanto gratiosior senectus._
_Tacit._, Germ., 14. Entirely similar in character were the
migrations of the Normans, which lasted just as long as the
resistance to the countries they would invade, seemed to
them a matter of less difficulty than the transition to a
higher civilization in their own country. _Malthus_ has
corrected the extravagant notions concerning the former
density of population in the North--the _vagina nationum_,
according to Jornandes! (_Malthus_, I, ch. 6.) Compare,
however, _Friedrich M._, in Antimachiavel, ch. 21, and the
later view: Ouevres, IX, 196.]

[Footnote 244-11: Among the Bedouins even three children are
considered a large family; and they even complain of that
number. (_Burckhardt._)]