Population

Abstract

PROF.CARR-SAUNDERS has given us in this little, book a most admirable discussion of the whole population question. He emphasises strongly the point that over-population is a relative term, the value of which depends entirely on the economic resources of the area under discussion. Thus, in the early Middle Ages, England with 6,000,000 inhabitants might have felt the pressure of population more severely than it does to-day with 40,000,000. He directs attention to the fact that all through human history voluntary checks on population have been practised; that in no known people was the regulation of increase left to the crude issue of natural selection. In a word, birth-control is as old as the hills. It was the Christian Church which put a stop to the methods of birth-control formerly in voguej namely, infanticide and abortion, owing to its insistence on the value of the individual. It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that that Father of the Church, Tertullian, regarded war, pestilence, and famine as divinely appointed agencies for keeping the increase of the human race within bounds.

Population.

By A. M. Carr-Saunders. (The World's Manuals.) Pp. 112. (London: Oxford University Press, 1925.) 2s. 6d. net.