Spencer Heath Archive

Item 2079

Two paragraphs penciled in a notebook, asterisked and starred for insertion in another piece of writing. (Original is in white envelope 1130 and needs to be numbered.)

1939?

*    In all animate nature this correlation between life
span and reproductivity is very great. The higher the
perils the more prolific the organism becomes. A plant
shortened on its stem multiplies its stalks and nipped in
its prime springs up again only to bear seeds. The animal
forms whose lives are perilous and brief and who otherwise
face extinction, must reproduce numerous young. Those
societal practices and arrangements under which men earliest
perish make them ________ to reproduce. At all levels of
persisting life fecundity of the species rises or falls with
the shortening or the lengthening of its days. Nature smiles
upon the subtler and more complex forms; and where time permits she endows her individuals with worth and beauty and
relinquishes the quantitative prudence that marks her path

to these.

#    This is the efficient employment by a population of its
energy above that requisite for reproduction and replacement.
It is the transformation of this surplus energy (by division
of labor) into service forms and its free redistribution by
voluntary exchange for the elevation of the units of which the
population is composed.