Chapter I: C D (4)

“‹If you do save›, you diminish the fund for wages, you injure a great number of your fellow-citizens, you strike a blow at labour, which is the universal creator of human satisfactions, and you lower, consequently, the general level of humanity.”

Now these frightful contradictions disappear before the explanation which we have given of saving—an explanation founded upon the ideas to which our inquiries on the subject of value conducted us.

Services are exchanged for services.

Value is the appreciation of two services compared with each other.

In this view, ‹to save› is to have rendered a service, and allow time [p395] for receiving the equivalent service, or, in other words, to interpose an interval of time between the service rendered and the service received.

Now, in what respect can a man do injury to society or to labour who merely abstains from drawing upon society for a service to which he has right? I can exact the value which is due to me upon the instant, or I may delay exacting it for a year. In that case I give society a year’s respite. During that interval, labour is carried on, and services are exchanged, just as if I did not exist. I have not by this means caused any disturbance. On the contrary, I have added one satisfaction more to the enjoyments of my fellow-citizens, and they possess it for a year gratuitously.

Gratuitously is not the word, for I must go on to describe the phenomenon.

The interval of time which separates the two services exchanged is itself the subject of a bargain, of an exchange, for it is possessed of ‹value›. It is the origin and explanation of ‹interest›.

A man, for instance, renders a present service. His wish is to receive the equivalent service only ten years hence. Here, then, is a value of which he refuses himself the immediate enjoyment. Now, it is of the nature of ‹value› to be able to assume all possible forms. With a determinate value, we are sure to obtain any imaginable service, whether productive or unproductive, of an equal value. He who delays for ten years to call in a debt, not only delays an enjoyment, but he delays the possibility of further production. It is on this account that he will meet with people in the world who are disposed to bargain for this delay. They will say to him: “You are entitled to receive immediately a certain value. It suits you to delay receiving it for ten years. Now, for these ten years, make over your right to me, place me in your room and stead. I shall receive for you the amount for which you are a creditor. I will employ it during these ten years in a productive enterprise, and repay you at the end of that time. By this means you will render me a ‹service›, and as every service has a value, which we estimate by comparing it with another service, we have only to estimate this service which I solicit from you, and so fix its ‹value›. This point being discussed and arranged, I shall have to repay you at the end of the ten years, not only the value of the service for which you are a creditor, but the value likewise of the service which you are about to render me.”

It is the value of this temporary transference of values saved which we denominate ‹interest›.

For the same reason that a third party may desire that we [p396] should transfer to him, ‹for an onerous consideration›, the enjoyment of a value saved, the original debtor may also desire to enter into the same bargain. In both cases this is called ‹asking for credit›. To give credit is to give time for the acquittance of a debt, of a value; it is to deprive oneself of the enjoyment of that value in favour of another, it is to render a service, it is to acquire a title to an equivalent service.

But to revert to the economic effects of saving, now that we are acquainted with all the details of the phenomenon, it is very evident that it does no injury to general activity or to labour. Even when the man who economizes realizes his economy, and, in exchange for services rendered, receives hard cash, and hoards it, he does no harm to society, seeing that he has not been able to withdraw that amount of value from society without restoring to it equivalent values. I must add, however, that such hoarding is improbable and exceptional, inasmuch as it is detrimental to the personal interests of the man who would practise it. Money in the hands of such a man may be supposed to say this: “He who possesses me has rendered services to society, and has not been paid for them. I have been put into his hands to serve him as a warrant; I am at once an acknowledgment, a promise, and a guarantee. The moment he wills it, he can, by exhibiting and restoring me, receive back from society the services for which he is a creditor.”

Now this man is in no hurry. Does it follow that he will continue to hoard his money? No; for we have seen that the lapse of time which separates two services exchanged becomes itself the subject of a commercial transaction. If the man who saves intends to remain ten years without drawing upon society for the services that are owing to him, his interest is to substitute a representative, in order to add to the value for which he is a creditor the value of this special service. Saving, then, implies in no shape actual hoarding.

Let moralists be no longer arrested by this consideration. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . [p397]

XVI. POPULATION.

I have been longing to enter upon the subject of this chapter, were it for no other purpose than to have an opportunity of vindicating Malthus from the violent attacks which have been made upon him. It is scarcely credible that a set of writers of no reputation or ability, and whose ignorance is transparent in every page of their works, should, by echoing one another’s opinions, have succeeded in lowering in public estimation a grave, conscientious, and philanthropic author; representing as absurd a theory which at all events deserves to be studied with serious attention.

It may be that I do not myself adopt all the opinions of Malthus. Every question has two phases: and I believe that Malthus may have fixed his regards too exclusively upon the sombre side. In my own economical studies and inquiries, I have been so frequently led to the conclusion, that ‹whatever is the work of Providence is good›, that when logic has seemed to force me to a different conclusion, I have been inclined to distrust my logic. I am aware that this faith in final causes is not unattended with danger to the mind of an inquirer. But this will not prevent me from acknowledging that there is a vast amount of truth in the admirable work of this economist, or from rendering homage to that ardent love of mankind by which every line of it is inspired.

Malthus, whose knowledge of the social economy was profound, had a clear view of all the ingenious mechanism with which nature has provided the human race to assure its onward march on the road of progress. And yet he believed that human progress might find itself entirely paralyzed by one principle, namely, the principle of Population. In contemplating the world, he gave way to the melancholy reflection, that “God appears to have taken great care of the species, and very little of the individual. In fact, as regards a certain class of animated beings, we see them endowed with a [p398] fecundity so prolific, a power of multiplication so extraordinary, a profusion of germs so superabundant, that the destiny of the species would seem undoubtedly well assured, while that of the individuals of the species appears very precarious; for the whole of these germs cannot be brought to life and maturity. They must either fail to live, or must die prematurely.”

“Man makes no exception to this law.” [It is surprising that this should shock the Socialists, who have never done telling us that general must take precedence of individual right.] “This much is certain, that God has secured the continuance of the human race by providing it with a great power of reproduction. The numbers of mankind, then, would come naturally, but for prudence and foresight, to exceed what the earth could maintain. But man is endued with foresight, and it is his reason and his will which can alone interpose a check to this fatal progression.”

Setting out from these premises, which you may dispute if you will, but which Malthus regarded as incontestable, he attached necessarily the highest value to the exercise of foresight. For there was no alternative;—man must either restrain voluntarily this excessive multiplication, or else he must become subject, like all the other species of living creatures, to the operation of positive or repressive checks.

Malthus, then, believed that he could never urge men too strongly to the exercise of foresight. His very philanthropy engaged him to exhibit in strong relief the fatal consequences of imprudent reproduction, in order to put men upon their guard. He said to them: If you multiply inconsiderately, you cannot avoid the chastisement which awaits you in some form or other, and always in a hideous form—famine, war, pestilence, etc. Benevolence, charity, poor-laws, and all other expedients are but ineffectual remedies.

In his ardour, Malthus allowed an expression to escape him, which, when separated from the rest of his system, and from the sentiment which dictated it, may appear harsh. It occurred in the first edition of his work, which was then only a brochure, and has since become a book of four volumes. It was represented to him that his meaning in this objectionable passage might give rise to erroneous interpretations. He immediately suppressed it, and it has never since reappeared in any of the numerous editions of his Essay on Population.

But Mr Godwin, one of his opponents, had quoted this suppressed passage, and the consequence was, that M. de Sismondi (a man who, with the best intentions in the world, has done much [p399] mischief) reproduced this unlucky sentence. The Socialists instantly laid hold of it, and on this they proceeded to try, condemn, and execute Malthus. Truly, they were much indebted to Sismondi’s learning, for they had never themselves read either Malthus or Godwin.

The Socialists have thus represented an unguarded passage, which Malthus himself had suppressed, as the basis of his system. They repeat it ‹ad nauseam›. In a little 18mo volume, M. Pierre Leroux reproduced it at least forty times, and it forms the stock-in-trade of all our declamatory second-rate reformers.

The most celebrated and the most vigorous of that school of writers having written an article against Malthus, I happened one day to converse with him, and cited some opinions expressed in the Essay on Population. I thought I perceived that he was not acquainted with the work. I remarked to him, “You who have refuted Malthus, have you not read his book from beginning to end?” “I have not read it at all,” he replied. “His whole system is to be found in one page, and is condensed in the famous ‘arithmetical and geometrical progressions’—that is enough for me.” “It seems to me,” I said, “that you are jesting with the public, with Malthus, with truth, with conscience, and with yourself.”

This is the way that opinions obtain currency with us. Fifty ignorant people repeat in chorus something spiteful and absurd, put forward by one more ignorant than themselves, and if it happens to have the least connexion with the fashionable opinions or passions of the hour, it is at once received as an axiom.

Science, however, it must be allowed, cannot enter on the solution of a problem with the settled intention of establishing a foregone conclusion, however consolatory. What should we think of a man who should sit down to the study of physiology, resolved beforehand to demonstrate that God has not willed that mankind should be afflicted with diseases? Were one physiologist to found a system on such a basis as this, and another to controvert it by an appeal to facts, the former would most likely fly into a rage, and tax his opponent with ‹impiety›; but it is difficult to believe that he would go the length of accusing his opponent himself of being the author of diseases.

This, however, is what has happened to Malthus. In a work founded on facts and figures, he explained a law which has given great offence to our optimists; and in their anxiety to ignore the existence of this law, they have attacked Malthus with rancorous virulence and flagrant bad faith, as if he had himself deliberately [p400] thrown in the way of mankind those obstacles which flowed, as he thought, from the principle of population. It would surely have been more philosophical to have proved simply that Malthus was mistaken, and that his pretended law had in reality no existence.

Population, we must allow, is one of a numerous class of subjects which serve to remind us that man has frequently left him only a choice of evils. Whatever may have been its design, suffering: has entered into the plan of Providence. Let us not, then, seek for harmony in the absence of evil, but in the tendency of evil to bring us back to what is good, and in the gradual contraction of its own domain. God has indued us with free will. It is necessary that we should ‹learn›,—which is a long and difficult process,—and then it is necessary that we should ‹act› on the knowledge thus acquired, which is not much less difficult. In this way we shall gradually emancipate ourselves from suffering, but without ever altogether escaping from it; for even when we succeed completely in eluding chastisement, we have still to exercise the painful effort of foresight. In freeing ourselves from the one, we must submit ourselves to the other.

It is of no use to rebel against this order of things; for it envelopes us; it is the atmosphere in which we live and breathe; and it is with this alternative of restriction or prevention before us, which we cannot get rid of, and cannot lose sight of, that we proceed, with Malthus, to enter upon the problem of population. On this great question I shall first of all assume the function of a mere reporter, and then give you my own views. If the laws of population can be comprised in a short aphorism, it will be a happy thing for the advancement and diffusion of the science. But if, from the number and the shifting nature of the postulates, we find that these laws refuse to be shut up in a brief and rigorous formula, we must acquiesce. Prolix exactitude is better than delusive brevity.

* * * * *

We have seen that progress consists in causing natural forces to co-operate more and more towards the satisfaction of our wants, so that, at each successive epoch, the same amount of utility is obtained, whilst to society is left either more leisure, or a greater amount of disposable labour, to be applied to the acquisition of new enjoyments.

On the other hand, we have demonstrated that every fresh conquest we thus gain over nature, after having for a time brought additional profit to the inventor, never fails to become, by the [p401] operation of the law of competition, the common and gratuitous patrimony of mankind at large.

From these premises we should conclude that human happiness must be enlarged, and, at the same time, rapidly equalized. That it has not been so in reality, however, is a point beyond all dispute. There are in the world multitudes of unfortunate people, whose wretchedness has not been caused by their own misdeeds.

How are we to account for this?

I believe it is owing to a multiplicity of causes. One of them is called ‹spoliation›, or, if you will, ‹injustice›. Economists have referred to it only incidentally, as implying some error, some false scientific notion. Engaged in the explanation of general laws, it is not their business, they think, to concern themselves with those laws, when they are not in operation or violated. Spoliation, however, has borne, and still bears, too prominent a share in human affairs to permit even economists to throw it aside as a consideration unworthy of being taken into account. What we have to do with here is not accidental thefts, petty larcenies, or isolated crimes. War, slavery, priestly impostures, privileges, monopolies, restrictions, abuses of taxation,—these are the more salient manifestations of spoliation. It is easy to see what influence disturbing forces of such magnitude must have exercised, and must still exercise by their presence, or the deep traces they have left behind them, on the inequality of conditions; and it will be our business hereafter to estimate the vast extent of their effects.

But another cause which retards progress, and, above all, which hinders its extension to all classes, is, as some authors think, the principle of population.

And no doubt, if in proportion as wealth increases, the number of people among whom that wealth is to be divided increases also, and more rapidly, absolute wealth may be greater, and individual wealth less.

If, moreover, there be one species of services which everybody can render, like the services which require only muscular exertion, and if it be just the class whose business it is to render such services, the worst paid of all, which multiplies with the greatest rapidity, we must conclude that labour creates for itself a fatal competition. The lowest class will never benefit by progress, if that class increases faster than it can spread and distribute itself.

You see, then, how important the principle of population is.

Malthus has reduced the principle to this formula: [p402]

‹Population has a tendency to keep on a level with the means of subsistence.›

I cannot help remarking in passing that it is surprising that the honour and responsibility of enunciating this principle, be it true or false, should have been ascribed to Malthus. No writer on such subjects since the days of Aristotle but has proclaimed it, and frequently in the very same words.[86]

It is impossible to look around us on the aggregate of animated beings without being convinced beyond doubt that nature has been more engrossed with the care of species than of individuals.

The precautions which nature has taken to ensure the perpetuity of races are remarkable; and among these precautions, a very noticeable one is the profusion of germs or seeds. This superabundance appears to be calculated in an inverse ratio to the sensibility, intelligence, and power with which each species is endowed, to enable it to resist destruction.

Thus, in the vegetable kingdom, the means of reproduction, by seeds, cuttings, etc., which a single plant can furnish, are countless. One elm (were all its seeds to take root) might give birth in a single year to a million of trees. Why should this not actually happen? Because all the seeds have not the benefit of the conditions which vegetable life exacts, namely, space and nourishment. They are destroyed; and as plants are destitute of sensibility, nature has spared neither the means of reproduction nor those of destruction.

Animals, too, whose life is of a type akin to vegetable life, reproduce themselves in immense numbers. Who has not wondered that oysters, for instance, could multiply sufficiently to supply the enormous consumption of them?

As we advance in the scale of animal life, we find that the means of reproduction has been bestowed by nature with greater parsimony.

Vertebrated animals, especially the larger species, do not multiply so quickly as others. The cow goes nine months, produces only [p403] one calf, and must suckle it for some time. Yet even among cattle the reproductive power surpasses what might be thought absolutely necessary. In rich countries, such as England, France, and Switzerland, the number of animals of this description increases notwithstanding the enormous destruction of them; and had we boundless pastures and prairies, there can be no doubt that we might have both a still greater destruction and more rapid reproduction of them. I should say that if nourishment and space were not limited, we might have in a few years ten times more oxen and cows, even if we consumed ten times more meat. The reproductive power of cattle, then, even laying aside the extraneous consideration of the limitation of space and nourishment, is far from being fully developed.

It is certain that the reproductive faculty in the human species is less powerful than in any other, and it ought to be so. Man, in the superior situation in which nature has placed him, as regards intelligence and sympathy, ought not to be exposed to destruction in the same degree as the inferior animals. But we are not to suppose that ‹physically› he escapes from that law in virtue of which all species have the faculty of multiplying to a greater extent than space and nourishment permit.

I say ‹physically›, because I am speaking here only of the physiological law.

There is a wide difference between the ‹physiological power› of multiplying and ‹actual› multiplication.

The one is an absolute organic power when freed from all obstacle and all limitation ‹ab extra›—the other is the effective resulting force of this power combined with the aggregate of all the resistance which limits and restrains it. Thus the power of multiplication of the poppy may be a million a year, perhaps; but in a field of poppies the actual reproduction may be stationary or even decrease.

It is this physiological law that Malthus essayed to reduce to a formula. He inquired in what period of time a given number of men would double, ‹if their space and food were unlimited›.

We can see beforehand that as this hypothesis of the ‹complete satisfaction of all wants› is never realized in practice, the ‹theoretic› period must necessarily be shorter than any period of ‹actual› doubling which has ever been observed.

Observation, in fact, gives very different results for different countries. According to the results obtained by M. Moreau de Jonnès, taking for basis the actual increase of population, the period of doubling would require—in Turkey, 555 years; in [p404] Switzerland, 227; in France, 138; in Spain, 106; in Holland, 100; in Germany, 76; in Russia and in England, 43; and in the United States of America, 25 years, deducting the contingent furnished by immigration.

Now, what is the reason of such enormous differences? We have no reason to think that they are the result of physiological causes. Swiss women are as well formed and as prolific as American women.

We must conclude, then, that the absolute generative power is restrained by external obstacles. And what proves this beyond doubt is, that it is manifested as soon as circumstances occur to remove these obstacles. Thus an improved agriculture, new manufactures, some new source of local wealth, leads invariably in that locality to an increase of population. In the same way, when a scourge like a plague, or a famine, or war, destroys a great part of the population, we immediately find that multiplication is more rapidly developed.

When an increase of population, then, is retarded, or stops, we find that space and nourishment are awanting, or likely to be so; that it has encountered an obstacle, or is scared by one.

This phenomenon, the announcement of which has brought down so much abuse on Malthus, appears in truth beyond the reach of doubt.

If you put a thousand mice into a cage, with only as much provision as is necessary for their daily sustenance, their number, in spite of the acknowledged fecundity of the species, can never exceed a thousand, or if it do, there will be privation and there will be suffering,—both tending to reduce the number. In this case it would be correct to say that an external cause limits, not the power of fecundity, but the result of fecundity. There would assuredly be an antagonism between the physiological tendency and the restraining force, and the result would be that the number would be stationary. To prove this, increase gradually the provision until you double it, and you will very soon find two thousand mice in the cage.

And what is the answer which is made to Malthus? He is met with the very ‹fact› upon which his theory is founded. The proof, it is said, that the power of reproduction in man is not indefinite, is that in certain countries the population is stationary. If the law of progression were true, if population doubled every twenty-five years, France, which had thirty millions of inhabitants in 1820, would now have more than sixty millions.

Is this logical? [p405]

I begin by proving that the population of France has increased only a fifth in twenty-five years, whilst in other countries it has doubled. I seek for the cause of this; and I find it in the deficiency of space and sustenance. I find that in the existing state of cultivation, population, and national manners and habits, there is a difficulty in creating with sufficient rapidity subsistence for generations that might be born, or for maintaining those that are actually born. I assert that the means of subsistence cannot be doubled—at least that they are not doubled—in France every twenty-five years. This is exactly the aggregate of those negative forces which restrain, as I think, the physiological power—and you bring forward this slowness of multiplication in order to prove that this physiological power has no existence. Such a mode of discussing the question is mere trifling.

Is the argument against the geometrical progression of Malthus more conclusive? Malthus has nowhere asserted that, ‹in point of fact›, population increases according to a geometrical progression. He alleges, on the contrary, that ‹the fact› is not so, and the subject of his inquiry has reference to the obstacles which hinder it. The progression is brought forward merely as a formula of the ‹organic› power of multiplication.

Seeking to discover in what time a given population can double itself, ‹on the assumption that all its wants are supplied›, he fixed this period at twenty-five years. He so fixed it, because direct observation had shown him that this state of things actually existed among a people, who, although very far from fulfilling all the conditions of his hypothesis, came nearer the conditions he had assumed than any other—namely, the people of America. This period once found, and the question having always reference to the ‹virtual› power of propagation, he lays it down that population ‹has a tendency to increase› in a geometrical progression.

This is denied; but the denial is in the teeth of evidence. It may be said, indeed, that the period of doubling may not be everywhere twenty-five years; that it may be thirty, forty, or fifty years; that it varies in different countries and races. All this is fair subject of discussion; but granting this, it certainly cannot be said that, on the hypothesis assumed, the progression is not geometrical. If, in fact, a hundred couples produce two hundred in a given time, why may not two hundred produce four hundred in an equal time?

Because, say the opponents of the theory, multiplication will be restrained.

This is just what Malthus has said. [p406]

But by what means will multiplication be restrained?

Malthus points out two general obstacles to indefinite multiplication, which he has denominated the ‹preventive› and ‹repressive checks›.

As population can be kept down below the level of its physiological tendency only by a diminution of the number of births, or an increase of the number of deaths, the nomenclature of Malthus is undoubtedly correct.

Moreover, when the conditions as regards space and nourishment are such that population cannot go beyond a certain figure, it is evident that the destructive check has more power, in proportion as the preventive check has less. To allege that the number of births may increase without an increase in the number of deaths, while the means of subsistence are stationary, would be to fall into a manifest contradiction.

Nor is it less evident, ‹à priori›, and independently of other grave economic considerations, that in such a situation voluntary self-restraint is preferable to forced repression.

As far as we have yet gone, then, the theory of Malthus is in all respects incontestable.

He was wrong, perhaps, in adopting this period of twenty-five years as the limit of human fecundity, although it holds good in the United States. I am convinced that in assuming this period he wished to avoid the imputation of exaggeration, or of dealing in pure abstractions. “How can they pretend,” he may have thought, “that I give too much latitude to ‹the possible› if I found my principle on what ‹actually› takes place?” He did not consider that by mixing up in this way the ‹virtual› and the ‹real›, and representing as the measure of ‹the law of multiplication›, without reference to ‹the law of limitation›, a period which is the result of ‹facts governed by both laws›, he should expose himself to be misunderstood. This is what has actually happened. His geometrical and arithmetical progressions have been laughed at; he has been reproached for taking the United States as a type of the rest of the world; in a word, the confusion he has given rise to by mixing up these two distinct laws, has been seized upon to confute the one by the other.

When we seek to discover the abstract power of propagation, we must put aside for the moment all consideration of the physical and moral checks arising from deficiency of space, food, or comfortable circumstances. But the question once proposed in these terms, it is quite superfluous to attempt an exact solution. This power, in the human race, as in all organized existences, surpasses, [p407] in an enormous proportion, all the phenomena of rapid multiplication that we have observed in the past, or can ever observe in the future. Take wheat, for example: allowing five stalks for every seed, and five grains for every stalk, one grain has the virtual power of producing four hundred millions of grains in five years. Or take the canine race, and suppose four puppies to each litter, and six years of fecundity, we shall find that one couple may in twelve years produce eight millions of cubs.

As regards the human race, assuming sixteen as the age of puberty, and fecundity to cease at thirty, each couple might give birth to eight children. It is making a large deduction to reduce this number to one-half on account of premature deaths, since we are reasoning on the supposition of absolute comfort and all wants satisfied, which greatly limits the amount of mortality. However, let us state the premises in this way, and they give us in twenty-five years 2—4—8—16—32—64—128—256—512, etc.; in short, two millions in two centuries.

If we make the calculation on the basis adopted by Euler, the period of doubling will be twelve years and a half. Eight such periods will make exactly a century, and the increase in that space of time will be as 512:2.

At no era, and in no country, have we ever observed the numbers of the human race increase with this frightful rapidity. According to the book of Genesis, the Hebrews who entered Egypt amounted to seventy couples;[87] and we find from the book of Numbers that when Moses numbered the people, two centuries afterwards, they amounted to six hundred thousand men above twenty-one years of age,[88] which supposes a population of two millions at least. From this we may infer that the period of doubling was fourteen years. Statistical tables can scarcely be admitted to control biblical facts. Shall we say that six hundred thousand men “able to go to war” supposes a population larger than two millions, and infer from that a period of doubling less than Euler has calculated? In that case, we should cast doubt either on the census of Moses or on the calculations of Euler. All that we contend for is, that it should not be pretended that the Hebrews multiplied with greater rapidity than it is possible to multiply.

After this example, which is probably that in which ‹actual› fecundity approximates most nearly to ‹virtual› fecundity, we have [p408] the case of the United States of America, where we know that the population doubles in less than twenty-five years.

It is unnecessary to pursue such researches further. It is sufficient to know that in our species, as in all, the organic power of multiplication is superior to the actual multiplication. Moreover, it would involve a contradiction to assert that the actual surpasses the virtual.

Alongside of this absolute power, which it is unnecessary to determine more exactly, and which we may safely regard as uniform, there exists, as we have said, another force, which limits, compresses, suspends, to a certain extent, the action of the first, and opposes to it obstacles of different kinds, varying with times and places, with the occupations, the manners, the laws, or the religion of different nations.

I denominate this second force ‹the law of limitation›; and it is evident that the progress of population in each country, and in each class, is the result of the combined action of these two laws.

But in what does this law of limitation consist? We may say in a very general way that the propagation of life is restrained or prevented by the difficulty of sustaining life. This idea, which we have already expressed in the terms of the formula of Malthus, it is of importance to develop farther, for it is the essential part of our subject.[89]

Organized existences, which are indued with life, but without feeling, are entirely passive in this struggle between the two principles. As regards vegetables, it is strictly true that the number of each species is limited by the means of subsistence. The profusion of germs is infinite, but the resources of space and territorial fertility are not so. These germs injure or destroy one another; they fail to grow, or they take root and come to maturity only to the extent that the soil allows of. Animals are endued with feeling, but they would seem in general to be destitute of foresight. They breed, increase, and multiply without regard to the fate of their offspring. Death, premature death, alone limits their multiplication, and maintains the equilibrium between their numbers and their means of subsistence.

M. de Lamennais, in his inimitable language, thus addresses the people:—

“There is room enough in the world for all, and God has made it fertile enough to supply the wants of all.” And, further on, he says,—“The Author of the universe has not assigned a worse [p409] condition to man than to the inferior animals. Are not all invited to the rich banquet of nature? Is one alone excluded?” And, again, he adds,—“Plants extend their roots from one field to another, in a soil which nourishes them all, and all grow there in peace; none of them absorbs the sap of another.”

In all this we see only fallacious declamation, which serves as the basis of dangerous conclusions; and we cannot help regretting that an eloquence so admirable should be devoted to giving popular currency to the most fatal of errors.

It is not true that no plant robs another of its sap, and that all extend their roots in the soil without injury. Hundreds of millions of vegetable germs fall every year upon the ground, derive from it a beginning of vitality, and then die stifled by plants stronger, ranker, hardier than themselves. It is not true that all animals which are born are invited to the banquet of nature, and that none of them is excluded. Wild beasts devour one another; and of domestic animals man destroys a countless number. Nothing, in fact, is better calculated than this to show the existence and relations of these two principles—that of multiplication and that of limitation. Why have we in this country so many oxen and sheep, notwithstanding the havoc we make? Why are there so few bears and wolves, although we slaughter far fewer of them, and they are so organized as to be capable of multiplying much faster? The reason is, that man prepares subsistence for the one class of animals, and takes it away from the other class. As regards each, he so arranges the law of limitation as to leave more or less latitude to the law of increase.

Thus, as regards both vegetables and animals, the limiting force appears only in one form, that of ‹destruction›. But man is indued with reason and foresight, and this new element modifies, and even changes, the mode of action of this force, so far as he is concerned.

Undoubtedly, in as far as he is a being provided with material organs, or, to speak plainly, in as far as he is an animal, the law of limitation, in the form of destruction, applies to him. It is impossible that the numbers of men can exceed their means of subsistence; for to assert that more men existed than had the means of existing, would imply a contradiction. If, then, his reason and foresight are lulled asleep, he becomes a vegetable, he becomes a brute. In that case, he will inevitably multiply in virtue of the great physiological law which governs all organized nature; and, in that case, it is equally inevitable that he should perish in virtue of that law of limitation the action of which he has ignored. [p410]

But if he exercise foresight, this second law comes within the sphere of his will. He modifies and directs it. It is, in fact, no longer the same law. It is no longer a blind, but an intelligent force; it is no longer a mere natural, it has become a social law. Man is the centre in which these two principles, matter and intelligence, meet, unite, and are blended; he belongs exclusively neither to the one nor to the other. As regards the human race, the ‹law of limitation› is manifested in both its aspects, and maintains population at the necessary level by the double action of foresight and destruction.

These two actions are not of uniform intensity. On the contrary, the one is enlarged in proportion as the other is restrained. The thing to be accomplished, the point to be reached is limitation; and it is so more or less by means of ‹repression›, or by means of ‹prevention›, according as man is brutish or spiritual, according as he is more allied to matter or to mind, according as he has in him more of vegetative or of moral life. The law may be external to him, or internal, but it must exist somewhere.

We do not form a just idea of the vast domain of foresight, which the translator of Malthus has much circumscribed, by giving currency to that vague and inadequate expression, ‹moral restraint› [‹contrainte morale›], which he has still farther limited by the definition he has given of it, namely, “The virtue which consists in not marrying, when one has not the means of ‹maintaining› a family, and yet living in chastity.” The obstacles which intelligent human society opposes to possible multiplication take many other forms besides that of moral restraint thus defined. What means, for example, the pure and holy ignorance of early life, the only ignorance which it is criminal to dissipate, which every one respects, and over which the timid mother watches as over hidden treasure? What means the modesty which succeeds that ignorance, that mysterious defence of the young female, which intimidates whilst it enchants her lover, and prolongs, while it embellishes, the innocent season of courtship? The veil which is thus interposed at first between ignorance and truth, and then between truth and happiness, is a marvellous thing, and in aught save this would be absurd. What means that power of opinion which imposes such severe laws on the relations of the sexes, stigmatizes the slightest transgression of those laws, and visits it not only on the erring feebleness which succumbs, but, from generation to generation, on the unhappy offspring? What mean that sensitive honour, that rigid reserve, so generally admired even by those who have cast it off, those institutions, those [p411] restraints of etiquette, those precautions of all sorts—if they are not the action of that ‹law of limitation› manifested in an intelligent, moral, and ‹preventive› shape—in a shape, consequently, which is peculiar to man?

Let these barriers be once overturned—let mankind, in what regards the sexes, be no longer concerned either with etiquette or with fortune, or with the future, or with opinion, or with manners—let men lower themselves to the rank of vegetables or animals,—can we doubt that for the former, as for the latter, the power of multiplication would act with a force to necessitate the instant intervention of the ‹law of limitation›, manifested under such circumstances in a physical, brutal, and ‹repressive› shape; that is to say, by the action of indigence, disease, and death?

It is impossible to deny that, but for foresight and moral considerations, marriage would, in most cases, be contracted at an early age, or immediately after puberty. If we fix this age at sixteen, and if the registers of a given country show that marriages on an average, do not take place before four-and-twenty, we have then eight years deducted by ‹the law of limitation›, in its moral and preventive form, from the action of the law of multiplication; and if we add to this figure the necessary allowance for those who never marry, we shall be convinced that the Creator has not degraded man to the level of the beasts that perish, but, on the contrary, has given him the power to transform the ‹repressive› into the ‹preventive› limitation.

It is singular enough that the spiritualist school and the materialist school should have, as it were, changed sides on this great question: the former fulminating against foresight, and endeavouring to set up the principle of animal nature; the latter exalting the moral part of man, and enforcing the dominion of reason over passion and appetite.

The truth is, the subject is not rightly understood. Let a father consult the most orthodox clergyman he can find as to the management of his family, the counsels he will receive are just those which science has exalted into ‹principles›, and which, as such, the clergyman might probably repudiate. “Keep your daughter in strict seclusion,” the old minister will say; “conceal from her as much as you can the seductions of the world; cultivate, as you would a precious flower, that holy ignorance, that heavenly modesty, which are at once her charm and her defence. Wait until an eligible match presents itself; and labour in the meantime to secure her an adequate fortune. Consider that a poor and improvident marriage brings along with it much suffering and many dangers. Recall [p412] those old proverbs which embody the wisdom of nations, and which assure us that comfortable circumstances constitute the surest guarantee of union and domestic peace. Why be in a hurry? Would you have your daughter at five-and-twenty burdened with a family which she cannot maintain and educate suitably to your rank in life? Would you have her husband, feeling the inadequacy of his income to support his family, fall into affliction and despair, and finally, perhaps, betake himself to riot and debauchery? The subject which now occupies you is the most important which can come under your consideration. Weigh it well and maturely; and avoid precipitation,” etc.

Suppose that the father, borrowing the language of M. de Lamennais, should reply: “In the beginning God addressed to all men the command to increase and multiply, and replenish the earth and subdue it. And yet you would persuade a young woman to live single, renounce family ties, and give up and abandon the chaste happiness of married life, and the holy joys of maternity; and all this for no better reason than a sordid fear of poverty.” Think you the old clergyman would have no reply to this?

God, he might say, has not commanded man to increase and multiply without discretion and without prudence; to act with as little regard to the future as the inferior animals. He has not indued man with reason, in order that he may cease to use it in the most solemn and important circumstances. He has commanded man, no doubt, to increase, but in order to increase he must live, and in order to live he must have the means of living. In the command to increase, therefore, there is implied another command, namely, to prepare for his offspring the means of subsistence. Religion has not placed celibacy in the catalogue of crimes. So far from that, she has ranked it as a virtue, which she honours and sanctifies. We must not think that we violate the commandment of God when we are preparing to fulfil it with prudence, and with a view to the future good, happiness, and dignity of our family.

Now this reasoning, or reasoning of a similar kind, which we hear repeated every day, and which regulates the conduct of every moral and enlightened family, what is it but the application of a general doctrine to particular cases? Or rather, what is that doctrine, but the generalization of reasoning which applies to every particular case? The spiritualist who repudiates, on principle, the intervention of preventive limitation, is like the natural philosopher who should say to us, “Act in every case as if gravity existed, but don’t admit gravitation in theory.” [p413]

In our observations hitherto we have followed the theory of Malthus; but there is one attribute of humanity to which it seems to me that most of our authors have not assigned that importance which it merits, and which plays an important part in the phenomena relative to population, resolves many of the problems to which this great question has given rise, and gives birth in the mind of the philanthropist to a confidence and serenity which false science had banished; this attribute, which is comprised, indeed, in the notions of reason and foresight, is man’s ‹perfectibility›. Man is perfectible; he is susceptible of amelioration and of deterioration; and if, in a strict sense, he can remain stationary, he can also mount and descend without limit the endless ladder of civilisation. This holds true not only of individuals, but of families, nations, and races.

It is from not having taken into account all the power of this progressive principle, that Malthus has landed us in those discouraging consequences which have rendered his theory generally repulsive.

For, regarding the ‹preventive check›, in a somewhat ascetic and not very attractive light, he could hardly attribute much force to it. Hence he concludes that it is the ‹repressive› check which generally operates; in other words, vice, poverty, war, crime, etc.

This, as I think, is an error; and we are about to see that the ‹limitative› force presents itself not only in the shape of an effort of chastity, an act of self-control, but also, and above all, as a condition of happiness, an instructive movement which prevents men from degrading themselves and their families.

Population, it has been said, tends to keep on a level with the means of subsistence. I should say that, for this expression ‹means of subsistence›, formerly in universal use, J. B. Say has substituted another which is much more correct, namely, ‹means of existence›. At first sight it would seem that subsistence alone enters into the question, but it is not so. ‹Man does not live by bread alone›, and a reference to facts shows us clearly that population is arrested, or retarded, when the aggregate of all the means of existence, including clothing, lodging, and other things which climate or even habit renders necessary, come to be awanting.

We should say, then, that population tends to keep on a level with the ‹means of existence›.

But do these means constitute something which is fixed, absolute, and uniform? Certainly not. In proportion as civilisation advances, the range of man’s wants is enlarged, having regard even to simple ‹subsistence›. Regarded as a perfectible being the ‹means of [p414] existence›, among which we comprehend the satisfaction of moral and intellectual, as well as physical wants, admit of as many degrees as there are degrees in civilisation itself, in other words, of infinite degrees. Undoubtedly, there is an inferior limit—to appease hunger, to shelter oneself from cold to some extent, is one condition of life, and this limit we may perceive among American savages or European paupers. But a superior limit I know not—in fact, there is none. Natural wants satisfied, others spring up, which are factitious at first, if you will, but which habit renders natural in their turn, and, after these, others still, and so on without assignable limit.

At each step, then, which man takes on the road of civilisation, his wants embrace a wider and more extended circle, and the ‹means of existence›, the point where the laws of ‹multiplication› and ‹limitation› meet, is removed and elevated. For although man is susceptible of deterioration as well as of improvement, he aspires after the one and shuns the other. His efforts all tend to maintain the rank he has gained, and to rise still higher; and ‹habit›, which has been so well called a second nature, performs the part of the valves of our arterial system, by checking every retrograde tendency. It is very natural, then, that the intelligent and moral control which man exercises over his own multiplication should partake of the nature of these efforts to rise, and be combined and mixed up with his progressive tendencies.

The consequences which result from this organization are numerous. We shall confine ourselves to pointing out a few of them. First of all, we admit with the Economists that population and the means of existence come to an equilibrium; but the last of these terms being infinitely flexible, and varying with civilisation and habits, we cannot admit that in comparing nations and classes, population is proportionate to ‹production›, as J. B. Say[90] affirms, or to ‹income›, as is represented by M. de Sismondi. And then every advancing step of culture implies greater foresight, and the moral and preventive check comes to neutralize the repressive one more and more as civilisation is realized in society at large, or in one or other of its sections. Hence it follows that each step of progress tends to a new step in the same direction, ‹vires acquirit eundo›; seeing that better circumstances and greater foresight engender one another in indefinite succession. For the same reason, when men, from whatever cause, follow a retrograde course, narrower circumstances and want of foresight become reciprocally cause and effect, [p415] and retrogression and decay would have no limit had society not been indued with that curative force, that ‹vis medicatrix›, which Providence has vouchsafed to all organized bodies. Observe, too, that at each step of this retrograde movement, the action of the law of limitation in its destructive form becomes at once more painful and more apparent. At first, it is only deterioration and sinking in the social scale; then it is poverty, famine, disorder, war, death;—painful but infallible teachers.

I should like to pause here to show how well this theory explains facts, and how well facts in their turn justify the theory. When, in the case of a nation or a class, the means of existence have descended to that inferior limit at which they come to be confounded with the means of pure subsistence, as in China, in Ireland, and among the lowest and poorest class of every country, the smallest oscillations of population, or of the supply of food, are tantamount to death. In this respect facts confirm the scientific induction. Famine has not for a long period visited Europe, and we attribute the absence of this scourge to a multitude of causes. The most general of these causes undoubtedly is, that the ‹means of existence›, by reason of social progress, have risen far above the ‹means of mere subsistence›. When years of scarcity come, we are thus enabled to give up many enjoyments before encroaching on the first necessaries of life. Not so in such countries as China or Ireland, where men have nothing in the world but a little rice or a few potatoes. When the rice or potato crops fail, they have absolutely no means of purchasing other food.