more clearly if he had altered the order of his argument. He might
have consistently taken the same line as earlier writers and declared
that he desired, above all things, the increase of population. He
would have had indeed to explain that he desired the increase of a
sound and virtuous population; and that hasty and imprudent increase
led to misery and to a demoralisation which would ultimately limit
numbers in the worst way. We shall see directly how nearly he accepts
this view. Meanwhile, by insisting upon the need of limitation, he was
led to speak often as if limitation by any means was good and the one
thing needful, and the polemic against Godwin in the first edition had
given prominence to this side of the question. Had he put his views in
a different shape, he would perhaps have been so edifying that he
would have been disregarded. He certainly avoided that risk, and had
whatever advantage is gained by stating sound doctrine paradoxically.

We shall, I think, appreciate his real position better by considering
his approximation to the theory which, as we know, was suggested to
Darwin by a perusal of Malthus.[237] There is a closer resemblance
than appears at first. The first edition concludes by two chapters
afterwards omitted, giving the philosophical application of his
theory. He there says that the 'world is a mighty process of God not
for the trial but for the creation and formation of the mind.'[238] It
is not, as Butler thought, a place of 'probation,' but a scene in
which the higher qualities are gradually developed. Godwin had quoted
Franklin's view that 'mind' would become 'omnipotent over matter.'
Malthus holds that, as he puts it, 'God is making matter into mind.'
The difference is that Malthus regards evil in general not as a sort
of accident of which we can get rid by reason; but as the essential
stimulus which becomes the efficient cause of intellectual activity.
The evils from which men suffer raise savage tribes from their
indolence, and by degrees give rise to the growth of civilisation. The
argument, though these chapters were dropped by Malthus, was taken up
by J. B. Sumner, to whom he refers in later editions.[239] It is, in
fact, an imperfect way of stating a theory of evolution. This appears
in his opening chapters upon the 'moral restraint.'[240] He explains
that moral and physical evils are 'instruments employed by the Deity'
to admonish us against such conduct as is destructive of happ