ABSTRACT
The danger to national strength that results from a growth of wealth in general has been emphasised by many writers. The danger to national strength and efficiency through an improvement in the distribution of the dividend might seem a priori to be very important. Economic changes, such as alterations in the size, composition, or distribution of the national dividend, affect environment only; and environment is of no importance, because improvements in it cannot react on the quality of the children born to those who enjoy the improvements. In a softened environment children of feeble constitution, who, in harder circumstances, would have died, are enabled to survive and themselves to have children. It has even been suggested that in this fact may lie the secret of the eventual decay of nations and of aristocracies which have attained great wealth.
