FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   130   131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143  
144   145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152   153   154   155   156   157   158   159   160   161   162   163   164   165   166   167   168   >>   >|  
rrowed (perhaps without consciousness, at any rate without acknowledgment) both the preliminary statement, that the increase in the supply of food "from a limited earth and a limited fertility" must have an end, while the tendency to increase in the principle of population has none, without some external and forcible restraint on it, and the subsequent use made of this statement as an insuperable bar to all schemes of Utopian or progressive improvement--both these he has borrowed (whole) from Wallace, with all their imperfections on their heads, and has added more and greater ones to them out of his own store. In order to produce something of a startling and dramatic effect, he has strained a point or two. In order to quell and frighten away the bugbear of Modern Philosophy, he was obliged to make a sort of monster of the principle of population, which was brought into the field against it, and which was to swallow it up quick. No half-measures, no middle course of reasoning would do. With a view to meet the highest possible power of reason in the new order of things, Mr. Malthus saw the necessity of giving the greatest possible physical weight to the antagonist principle, and he accordingly lays it down that its operation is mechanical and irresistible. He premises these two propositions as the basis of all his reasoning, 1. _That food is necessary to man_; 2. _That the desire to propagate the species is an equally indispensable law of our existence_:--thus making it appear that these two wants or impulses are equal and coordinate principles of action. If this double statement had been true, the whole scope and structure of his reasoning (as hostile to human hopes and sanguine speculations) would have been irrefragable; but as it is not true, the whole (in that view) falls to the ground. According to Mr. Malthus's octavo edition, the sexual passion is as necessary to be gratified as the appetite of hunger, and a man can no more exist without propagating his species than he can live without eating. Were it so, neither of these passions would admit of any excuses, any delay, any restraint from reason or foresight; and the only checks to the principle of population must be vice and misery. The argument would be triumphant and complete. But there is no analogy, no parity in the two cases, such as our author here assumes. No man can live for any length of time without food; many persons live all their lives without gratifying
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   130   131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143  
144   145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152   153   154   155   156   157   158   159   160   161   162   163   164   165   166   167   168   >>   >|  



Top keywords:
principle
 

reasoning

 

population

 

statement

 

increase

 
reason
 
limited
 

Malthus

 
restraint
 

species


double

 

irrefragable

 
structure
 

speculations

 
sanguine
 

hostile

 
equally
 
indispensable
 

existence

 

propagate


desire

 

making

 

coordinate

 

principles

 

action

 

impulses

 

complete

 

analogy

 

parity

 

triumphant


argument

 
checks
 

misery

 

persons

 

gratifying

 
length
 

author

 
assumes
 

foresight

 
sexual

passion
 

gratified

 
appetite
 
edition
 

octavo

 

ground

 
According
 

hunger

 
passions
 

excuses