An Essay on the Principle of Population | Page 4

implies a strong and constantly operating check on population
from the difficulty of subsistence. This difficulty must fall somewhere
and must necessarily be severely felt by a large portion of mankind.

Through the animal and vegetable kingdoms, nature has scattered the
seeds of life abroad with the most profuse and liberal hand. She has
been comparatively sparing in the room and the nourishment necessary
to rear them. The germs of existence contained in this spot of earth,
with ample food, and ample room to expand in, would fill millions of
worlds in the course of a few thousand years. Necessity, that imperious
all pervading law of nature, restrains them within the prescribed bounds.
The race of plants and the race of animals shrink under this great
restrictive law. And the race of man cannot, by any efforts of reason,
escape from it. Among plants and animals its effects are waste of seed,
sickness, and premature death. Among mankind, misery and vice. The
former, misery, is an absolutely necessary consequence of it. Vice is a
highly probable consequence, and we therefore see it abundantly
prevail, but it ought not, perhaps, to be called an absolutely necessary
consequence. The ordeal of virtue is to resist all temptation to evil.
This natural inequality of the two powers of population and of
production in the earth, and that great law of our nature which must
constantly keep their effects equal, form the great difficulty that to me
appears insurmountable in the way to the perfectibility of society. All
other arguments are of slight and subordinate consideration in
comparison of this. I see no way by which man can escape from the
weight of this law which pervades all animated nature. No fancied
equality, no agrarian regulations in their utmost extent, could remove
the pressure of it even for a single century. And it appears, therefore, to
be decisive against the possible existence of a society, all the members
of which should live in ease, happiness, and comparative leisure; and
feel no anxiety about providing the means of subsistence for
themselves and families.
Consequently, if the premises are just, the argument is conclusive
against the perfectibility of the mass of mankind.
I have thus sketched the general outline of the argument, but I will
examine it more particularly, and I think it will be found that
experience, the true source and foundation of all knowledge, invariably
confirms its truth.

CHAPTER 2
The different ratio in which population and food increase--The
necessary effects of these different ratios of increase-- Oscillation
produced by them in the condition of the lower classes of
society--Reasons why this oscillation has not been so much observed as
might be expected--Three propositions on which the general argument
of the Essay depends--The different states in which mankind have been
known to exist proposed to be examined with reference to these three
propositions.
I said that population, when unchecked, increased in a geometrical ratio,
and subsistence for man in an arithmetical ratio.
Let us examine whether this position be just. I think it will be allowed,
that no state has hitherto existed (at least that we have any account of)
where the manners were so pure and simple, and the means of
subsistence so abundant, that no check whatever has existed to early
marriages, among the lower classes, from a fear of not providing well
for their families, or among the higher classes, from a fear of lowering
their condition in life. Consequently in no state that we have yet known
has the power of population been left to exert itself with perfect
freedom.
Whether the law of marriage be instituted or not, the dictate of nature
and virtue seems to be an early attachment to one woman. Supposing a
liberty of changing in the case of an unfortunate choice, this liberty
would not affect population till it arose to a height greatly vicious; and
we are now supposing the existence of a society where vice is scarcely
known.
In a state therefore of great equality and virtue, where pure and simple
manners prevailed, and where the means of subsistence were so
abundant that no part of the society could have any fears about
providing amply for a family, the power of population being left to
exert itself unchecked, the increase of the human species would
evidently be much greater than any increase that has been hitherto

known.
In the United States of America, where the means of subsistence have
been more ample, the manners of the people more pure, and
consequently the checks to early marriages fewer, than in any of the
modern states of Europe, the population has been found to double itself
in twenty-five years.
This ratio of increase, though short of the utmost power of population,
yet as the result of actual experience,