I suppose that the moral transformations predicted by Mr. Spencer, could
be effected only with the aid of physiological change, and at a terrible
cost. Those ethical conditions manifested by insect-societies can have been
reached only through effort desperately sustained for millions of years
against the most atrocious necessities. Necessities equally merciless may
have to be met and mastered eventually by the human race. Mr. Spencer has
shown that the time of the greatest possible human suffering is yet to
come, and that it will be concomitant with the period of the greatest
possible pressure of population. Among other results of that long stress, I
understand that there will be a vast increase in human intelligence and
sympathy; and that this increases of intelligence will be effected at the
cost of human fertility. But this decline in reproductive power will not,
we are told, be sufficient to assure the very highest of social conditions:
it will only relieve that pressure of population which has been the main
cause of human suffering. The state of perfect social equilibrium will be
approached, but never quite reached, by mankind --



Unless there be discovered some means of solving economic problems, just
as social insects have solved them, by the suppression of sex-life.



Supposing that such a discovery were made, and that the human race should
decide to arrest the development of six in the majority of its young,-- so
as to effect a transferrence of those forces, now demanded by sex-life to
the development of higher activities,-- might not the result be an eventual
state of polymorphism, like that of ants? And, in such event, might not the