THE DOGMA OF EVOLUTION 



ter as untenable, and preach natural selection as a 

 scientific explanation based on the certain founda- 

 tion of observation and reason. 



If Darwinism, or any other theory of the method 

 of evolution, is to serve us as a guide in the broad 

 field of human thought and conduct, it must satisfy 

 us by its soundness as a philosophical system rather 

 than by its apparent agreement with a limited num- 

 ber of biological observations and experiments. As 

 we have seen, natural selection is based on the philo- 

 sophical systems of Mai thus and Spencer and, so far 

 as I can discover, the Darwinians have not denied this 

 assertion. As I intend to discuss the work of Spencer 

 in a later chapter it is necessary now to consider only 

 the ideas of Malthus, They are so manifestly false 

 that it should be necessary merely to state them ; but 

 those who teach and preach Darwinism so seldom do 

 more than to echo the phrase, "struggle for exist- 

 ence," that it will be profitable to examine this doc- 

 trine of economic philosophy in some detail. 



The fallacy of the Malthusian theory may be ex- 

 hibited in two ways. The one is, that the theory of 

 Malthus is false in itself, and the other is, that even 

 if it were true as an economic theory of the relation 

 of population to available land production, it would 

 fail absolutely when extended, as Darwin assumed, 

 to a general scientific law of nature. 



Malthus lays down as a postulate that population 

 tends to increase in a geometrical ratio while its food 



I 204 ] 



