Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 2.djvu/31

when the inducements to multiply are considered as well as the untiring industry of the people and the obviously severe struggle for existence in which numbers of them are compelled to engage, the accuracy of the figures upon which the above calculations are based would not be credible if the distribution of wealth and the rewards of industry were regulated by the laws prevailing in Western countries. Summarising the exceptional incentives to increase of population, there are found, first, the religious tenet that the spirits of the dead cannot obtain peace unless worship is performed at their tombs by male descendants; secondly, the ethical obligation of continuing the family;^[1] thirdly, the social stigma which attaches to an unwedded marriageable girl; and fourthly, the provision of law which requires that husbands shall be furnished for females sold into service. The influence of these factors, acting through centuries, is partially mitigated by the operation of stupendous natural calamities to cope with which no adequate organisation exists, so that hundreds of thousands of lives are lost without exciting any national emotion, and by periodical émeutes which claim a scarcely smaller tale of victims. But the net result is certainly a rapid growth of population, and no one can travel through China without receiving an impression that the people are so numerous as almost to overtax the means of subsistence, and that an