logical and metaphysical period;
but now there exists positive, critical science, which does not deceive,
since it is all founded on induction and experiment. Now our erections
are not shaky, as they formerly were, and only in our path lies the
solution of all the problems of humanity."

But the old teachers said precisely the same, and they were no fools; and
we know that there were people of great intelligence among them. And
precisely thus, within my memory, and with no less confidence, with no
less recognition on the part of the crowd of so-called cultivated people,
spoke the Hegelians. And neither were our Herzens, our Stankevitches, or
our Byelinskys fools. But whence arose that marvellous manifestation,
that sensible people should preach with the greatest assurance, and that
the crowd should accept with devotion, such unfounded and unsupportable
teachings? There is but one reason,--that the teachings thus inculcated
justified people in their evil life.

A very poor English writer, whose works are all forgotten, and recognized
as the most insignificant of the insignificant, writes a treatise on
population, in which he devises a fictitious law concerning the increase
of population disproportionate to the means of subsistence. This
fictitious law, this writer encompasses with mathematical formulae
founded on nothing whatever; and then he launches it on the world. From
the frivolity and the stupidity of this hypothesis, one would suppose
that it would not attract the attention of any one, and that it would
sink into oblivion, like all the works of the same author which followed
it; but it turned out quite otherwise. The hack-writer who penned this
treatise instantly becomes a scientific authority, and maintains himself
upon that height for nearly half a century. Malthus! The Malthusian
theory,--the law of the increase of the population in geometrical, and of
the means of subsistence in arithmetical proportion, and the wise and
natural means of restricting the population,--all these have become
scientific, indubitable truths, which have not been confirmed, but which
have been employed as axioms, for the erection of false theories. In
this manner have learned and cultivated people proceeded; and among the
herd of idle persons, there sprung up a pious trust in the great laws
expounded by Malthus. How did this come to pass? It would seem as
though they were scientific deductions, which had nothing in common