ABSTRACT
In the remainder of this book we shall analyze the major problems of the family. If the Western world escapes from its threatened enslavement, the crucial problem, as we have seen, will be population. A democratic population policy, as we have also seen, centers about the general aim of happiness. It treats happiness as an ultimate end and also as the instrumental key which will reconcile population adequacy with democratic freedom of living. In other words, a positive happiness policy may resolve Herbert Spencer's hypothecated contradiction between “individuation and genesis.” This is a generalization, namely, that the more individualized or specialized life becomes, the fewer the offspring. It holds roughly true as we ascend the animal scale. The further application of the principle to social evolution also seems to hold true empirically, although it does not follow logically; that is, it is claimed that the more highly individualized human personalities become, the more complex and specialized their activities and scales of living, the fewer offspring they have. Yet there are reasons for believing that this correlation is not inevitable. It has not been universally true. The aim of a democratic population policy is to upset it.
