Page:Confessions of an Economic Heretic.djvu/158

If it be true that human life in general, with all its chances and changes, its successes and failures, is desired and desirable, the quantitative aspect of the population question has a proper and perhaps an important place in any economy of human welfare. This consideration may override the purely economic test of an optimum. For it may be better to have a larger number of human beings living somewhat below that higher economic level which our “optimists” desiderate, provided the lower level makes an adequate provision for the prime needs of life. Setting aside the philosophy of pessimism, the mere fact that nearly everyone prefers to go on living is prima Jade evidence that life as such is a positive value. How valuable nobody is in a position to judge, but if it be held to have some value, then the larger the population the larger the volume of that value. Though this inherent value of life is admittedly dependent upon a sufficiency of food and other material economic goods, it cannot rightly be measured by the monetary or even the utility value of these goods. For the end or result may be immeasurably, i.e. qualitatively, more valuable than the means. Not a few civilized persons who have lived among primitive peoples, well accommodated to their environment, put a higher value upon their lot than upon the life of the modem cities in which most civilized people live on a higher economic level. There is, doubtless, a great deal of the “artificial,” or mere “swank” in civilization, and some measure of