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.