"3. The present differential birth-rate--high amongst the less
intelligent classes and low amongst the most capable families--so far
from leading upwards, is causing the race to breed to a lower type.

"4. The small family encourages the growth of luxury and the
development of what M. Leroy-Beaulieu calls _l'esprit arriviste_.

"5. The popular idea that _childbirth is injurious_ to a woman's health
is probably _quite erroneous_. Where the _birth-rate is high the health
of the woman is apparently better_ than where it is artificially low.

"6. A study of history does not show that nations with low birth-rates
have been able to attain to a higher level of civilisation. Such
nations have been thrust into the background by their hardier
neighbours." [95]

Moreover, M. Leroy-Beaulieu, in _La Question de la Population_ [96] states
that those districts of France which show an exceptionally low birthrate
are distinguished by a peculiar atmosphere of materialism, and that their
inhabitants exhibit, in a high degree, an attitude of mind well named
_l'esprit arriviste_--the desire to concentrate on outward success, to push
on, to be climbers, to advance themselves and their children in fashionable
society. This spirit means the willing sacrifice of all ideals of ethics
or of patriotism to family egoism. To this mental attitude, and to the
corresponding absence of religion, he attributes the decline of population.
In conclusion the following evidence is quoted by Professor Meyrick Booth:

"The _Revue des Deux Mondes_ for July 1911 contains a valuable account,
by a doctor resident in Gascony, of the state of things in that part of