But these are unimportant details. It is immaterial whether we lengthen the interval between the two terms from twenty-five to thirty-three years, or reduce the ratio from 2 to 1½, or even to something between 1¼ and 1¹/₁₀. The movement will be a little slower, but it is enough that its geometrical character should be admitted, for however slow it moves at first it will grow by leaps and bounds until it surpasses all limits. These corrections fail to touch the real force of Malthus’s reasoning concerning the law of reproduction.
The series representing the growth of the means of subsistence is also open to criticism. It is evidently of a more arbitrary character, and we cannot say whether it is simply supposed to represent a possible contingency like the first, or whether it pretends to represent reality. At least it does not correspond to any known and certain law, such as the law of reproduction. As a matter of fact it rather seems to give it the lie; for, in short, what is meant by means of subsistence unless we are to understand the animal and vegetable species that reproduce themselves according to the same laws as human beings, only at a much faster rate? The power of reproduction among plants, like corn or potatoes, or among animals, like fowls, herrings, cattle even, or sheep, far surpasses that of man. To this criticism Malthus might have replied as follows. This virtual power of reproduction possessed by these necessaries of life is in reality confined to very limited areas of the habitable globe. It is further restricted by the difficulty of obtaining the proper kind of nourishment, and by the struggle for existence. But if we admit exceptions in the one case why not also in the other? It certainly seems as if there were some inconsistency here. As a matter of fact we have two different theses. The one attempts to show how multiplication or reproduction need not of necessity be less rapid among plants or animals than it is among men. The other expresses what actually happens by showing that the obstacles to the indefinite multiplication of men are not less numerous than the difficulties in the way of an indefinite multiplication of vegetables or animals, or, in other words, that the former is a function of the latter.
In order to grasp the true significance of the second formula it must be translated from the domain of biology into the region of economics. Malthus evidently thought of it as the amount of corn yielded by a given quantity of land. The English economists could think of nothing except in terms of corn! What he wished to point out was that the utmost we can expect in this matter is that the increase in the amount of the harvest should be in arithmetical progression—say, an increase of two hectolitres every twenty-five years. This hypothesis is really rather too liberal. Lavoisier in 1789 calculated that the French crop yielded on an average about 7¾ hectolitres per hectare. During the last few years it has averaged about 16, and if we admit that the increment has been regular throughout the 120 years which have since elapsed we have an increase of 2 hectolitres per 25 years. This rate of increase has proved sufficient to meet the small increase which has taken place in the population of France. But would it have sufficed for a population growing as rapidly as that of England or Germany? Assuredly not, for these countries, despite their superior yields, are forced to import from outside a great proportion of the grain which they consume. The question arises whether France can continue indefinitely on the same basis during the course of the coming centuries. This is, indeed, unlikely, for there must be a physical limit to the earth’s capacity on account of the limited number of elements it contains. The economic limit will be reached still earlier because of the increasing cost of attempting to carry on production at these extreme limits. Thus it seems as if the law of diminishing returns, which we must study later, were the real basis of the Malthusian laws, although Malthus himself makes no express mention of it.
It is a truism that the number of people who can live in any place cannot exceed the number of people who can gain subsistence there. Any excessive population must, according to definition, die of hunger.[297] This is just what happens in the animal and vegetable kingdoms. Germs are extraordinarily prolific, but their undue multiplication is pitilessly retarded by a law which demands the death of a certain proportion, so that life, like a well-regulated reservoir, always remains at a mean level, the terrible gaps made by death being replenished by a new flow. Among savages, just as among animals, which they much resemble, a large proportion literally dies of hunger. Malthus devoted much attention to the study of primitive society, and he must be regarded as one of the pioneers of prehistoric sociology—a subject that has made much headway since then.
He proceeds to show how insufficient nourishment always brings a thousand evils in its train, not merely hunger and death, but also epidemics and such terrible practices as cannibalism, infanticide, and slaughter of the old, as well as war, which, even when not undertaken with a definite view to eating the conquered, always results in robbing them of their land and the food which it yielded. These are the “positive” or “repressive” checks.
But it may be replied that both among savages and animals the cause of this insufficiency of food is an incapacity for production rather than an excess of population.
Malthus has no difficulty in answering this objection by showing how savage customs prevailed among such civilised people as the Greeks. And even among the most modern nations the repressive checks, somewhat mitigated it is true, are never really absent. Famine in the sense of absolute starvation is seldom experienced nowadays, except in Russia and India, perhaps, but it is by no means a stranger even to the most advanced communities. Tuberculosis, which involves such terrible bodily suffering, is nothing but a deadly kind of famine. Lack of food is also responsible for the abnormally high rate of infant mortality and for the premature death of the adult worker. As for war, it still demands its toll. Malthus was living during the wars of the Revolution and the First Empire—bloody catastrophes that caused the death of about ten million men, all in the prime of life.
In civilized communities equilibrium is possible through humaner methods, in the substitution of the preventive check with its reduced birth-rate for the repressive check with its abnormal death-rate. Here is an expedient of which only the rational and the provident can avail themselves, an expedient open only to man. Knowing that his children are doomed to die—perhaps at an early age—he may abstain from having any. In reality this is the only efficacious way of checking the growth of population, for the positive check only excites new growth, just as the grass that is mown grows all the more rapidly afterwards. The history of war furnishes many a striking illustration of this. The year following the terrible war of 1870–71 remains unique in the demographic annals of France on account of the sudden upward trend of the declining curve of natality.
It was in the second edition of his book that Malthus expanded his treatment of the preventive checks, thus softening the somewhat harsher aspects of his first edition. It is very important that we should grasp his exact meaning. We therefore make no apology for frequently quoting his views on one point which is in itself very important, but upon which the ideas of the reverend pastor of Haileybury have been so often misrepresented.
The preventive check must be taken to imply moral restraint. But does this mean abstaining from sexual intercourse during the period of marriage after the birth, say, of three children, which may be taken as sufficient to keep the population stationary or moderately progressive? We cannot find that Malthus ever advocated such abstention. We have already seen that he considered six children a normal family, implying the doubling of the population every twenty-five years. Neither is it suggested that six should be the maximum, for he adds: “It may be said, perhaps, that even this degree of prudence might not always avail, as when a man marries he cannot tell what number of children he shall have, and many have more than six. This is certainly true.” (P. 536.)
But where does moral restraint come in? This is how he defines it: “Restraint from marriage which is not followed by irregular gratifications may properly be termed moral restraint” (p. 9); and to avoid any possible misunderstanding he adds a note: “By moral restraint I would be understood to mean a restraint from marriage from prudential motives with a conduct strictly moral during the period of this restraint, and I have never intentionally deviated from this sense.” All this is perfectly explicit. He means abstention from all sexual intercourse outside the bonds of marriage, and the postponement of marriage