population

• stationary in light and life

55:6.3On a nor­mal world the bi­o­logic fit­ness of the mor­tal race was long since brought up to a high level dur­ing the post-Adamic epochs; and now, from age to age through­out the set­tled eras the phys­i­cal evo­lu­tion of man con­tin­ues. Both vi­sion and hear­ing are ex­tended. By now the pop­u­la­tion has be­come sta­tion­ary in num­bers. Re­pro­duc­tion is reg­u­lated in ac­cor­dance with plan­e­tary re­quire­ments and in­nate hered­i­tary en­dow­ments: The mor­tals on a planet dur­ing this age are di­vided into from five to ten groups, and the lower groups are per­mit­ted to pro­duce only one half as many chil­dren as the higher. The con­tin­ued im­prove­ment of such a mag­nif­i­cent race through­out the era of light and life is largely a mat­ter of the se­lec­tive re­pro­duc­tion of those racial strains which ex­hibit su­pe­rior qual­i­ties of a so­cial, philo­sophic, cos­mic, and spir­i­tual na­ture.

• numbered 500 million on Caligastia’s arrival

66:0.2About five hun­dred thou­sand years ago and con­cur­rent with the ap­pear­ance of the six col­ored or San­gik races, Cali­gas­tia, the Plan­e­tary Prince, ar­rived on Uran­tia. There were al­most one-half bil­lion prim­i­tive hu­man be­ings on earth at the time of the Prince’s ar­rival, and they were well scat­tered over Eu­rope, Asia, and Africa. The Prince’s head­quar­ters, es­tab­lished in Mes­o­po­ta­mia, was at about the cen­ter of world pop­u­la­tion.

• varies inversely with given standard of living

68:6.3Hu­man so­ci­ety is con­trolled by a law which de­crees that the pop­u­la­tion must vary di­rectly in ac­cor­dance with the land arts and in­versely with a given stan­dard of liv­ing. Through­out these early ages, even more than at pres­ent, the law of sup­ply and de­mand as con­cerned men and land de­ter­mined the es­ti­mated value of both. Dur­ing the times of plen­ti­ful land—un­oc­cu­pied ter­ri­tory—the need for men was great, and there­fore the value of hu­man life was much en­hanced; hence the loss of life was more hor­ri­fy­ing. Dur­ing pe­ri­ods of land scarcity and as­so­ci­ated over­pop­u­la­tion, hu­man life be­came com­par­a­tively cheap­ened so that war, famine, and pesti­lence were re­garded with less con­cern.

• overpopulation › reduction in p. fosters better side of human nature

68:6.4When the land yield is re­duced or the pop­u­la­tion is in­creased, the in­ev­i­ta­ble strug­gle is re­newed; the very worst traits of hu­man na­ture are brought to the sur­face. The im­prove­ment of the land yield, the ex­ten­sion of the me­chan­i­cal arts, and the re­duc­tion of pop­u­la­tion all tend to fos­ter the de­vel­op­ment of the bet­ter side of hu­man na­ture.

• overpopulation › early races restricted p. by killing sickly children

68:6.8The early races of­ten re­sorted to prac­tices de­signed to re­strict pop­u­la­tion; all prim­i­tive tribes killed de­formed and sickly chil­dren. Girl ba­bies were fre­quently killed be­fore the times of wife pur­chase. Chil­dren were some­times stran­gled at birth, but the fa­vorite method was ex­po­sure. The fa­ther of twins usu­ally in­sisted that one be killed since mul­ti­ple births were be­lieved to be caused ei­ther by magic or by in­fi­delity. As a rule, how­ever, twins of the same sex were spared. While these taboos on twins were once well-nigh uni­ver­sal, they were never a part of the An­don­ite mores; these peo­ples al­ways re­garded twins as omens of good luck.

• overpopulation › may become serious problem in near future

68:6.11From a world stand­point, over­pop­u­la­tion has never been a se­ri­ous prob­lem in the past, but if war is less­ened and sci­ence in­creas­ingly con­trols hu­man dis­eases, it may be­come a se­ri­ous prob­lem in the near fu­ture. At such a time the great test of the wis­dom of world lead­er­ship will pre­sent it­self. Will Uran­tia rulers have the in­sight and cour­age to fos­ter the mul­ti­pli­ca­tion of the av­er­age or sta­bi­lized hu­man be­ing in­stead of the ex­tremes of the super­nor­mal and the enor­mously in­creas­ing groups of the sub­nor­mal? The nor­mal man should be fos­tered; he is the back­bone of civ­i­liza­tion and the source of the mu­tant ge­niuses of the race. The sub­nor­mal man should be kept un­der so­ci­ety’s con­trol; no more should be pro­duced than are re­quired to ad­min­is­ter the lower lev­els of in­dus­try, those tasks re­quir­ing in­tel­li­gence above the an­i­mal level but mak­ing such low-grade de­mands as to prove ver­i­ta­ble slav­ery and bond­age for the higher types of man­kind.

• overpopulation › reduction in p. fosters better side of human nature

79:1.6In­creas­ing arid­ity in cen­tral Asia fur­ther op­er­ated to re­duce pop­u­la­tion and to ren­der these peo­ple less war­like; and when the di­min­ish­ing rain­fall to the north forced the no­madic An­don­ites south­ward, there was a tremen­dous ex­o­dus of And­ites from Tur­kes­tan. This is the ter­mi­nal move­ment of the so-called Aryans into the Lev­ant and In­dia. It cul­mi­nated that long dis­per­sal of the mixed de­scen­dants of Adam dur­ing which ev­ery Asi­atic and most of the is­land peo­ples of the Pa­cific were to some ex­tent im­proved by these su­pe­rior races.

• overpopulation › reduction in p. fosters better side of human nature

79:8.2With the com­ple­tion of the con­quest of east­ern Asia the an­cient mil­i­tary state grad­u­ally dis­in­te­grated—past wars were for­got­ten. Of the epic strug­gle with the red race there per­sisted only the hazy tra­di­tion of an an­cient con­test with the archer peo­ples. The Chi­nese early turned to ag­ri­cul­tural pur­suits, which con­tributed fur­ther to their pa­cific ten­den­cies, while a pop­u­la­tion well be­low the land-man ra­tio for agri­cul­ture still fur­ther con­tributed to the grow­ing peace­ful­ness of the coun­try.

• overpopulation › wise nation knows when to cease growing

81:6.114. Hu­man re­sources. Man power is in­dis­pens­able to the spread of civ­i­liza­tion. All things equal, a nu­mer­ous peo­ple will dom­i­nate the civ­i­liza­tion of a smaller race. Hence fail­ure to in­crease in num­bers up to a cer­tain point pre­vents the full re­al­iza­tion of na­tional des­tiny, but there comes a point in pop­u­la­tion in­crease where fur­ther growth is sui­ci­dal. Mul­ti­pli­ca­tion of num­bers be­yond the op­ti­mum of the nor­mal man-land ra­tio means ei­ther a low­er­ing of the stan­dards of liv­ing or an im­me­di­ate ex­pan­sion of ter­ri­to­rial bound­aries by peace­ful pen­e­tra­tion or by mil­i­tary con­quest, forcible oc­cu­pa­tion.

• necessity for producing large numbers
• overpopulation › wise nation knows when to cease growing

81:6.12You are some­times shocked at the rav­ages of war, but you should rec­og­nize the ne­ces­sity for pro­duc­ing large num­bers of mor­tals so as to af­ford am­ple op­por­tu­nity for so­cial and moral de­vel­op­ment; with such plan­e­tary fer­til­ity there soon oc­curs the se­ri­ous prob­lem of over­pop­u­la­tion. Most of the in­hab­ited worlds are small. Uran­tia is av­er­age, per­haps a tri­fle un­der­sized. The op­ti­mum sta­bi­liza­tion of na­tional pop­u­la­tion en­hances cul­ture and pre­vents war. And it is a wise na­tion which knows when to cease grow­ing.