460 THE HISTORY OF BIOLOGY 



for the violent opposition on the part of all adherents to the old order of 

 society, which was not yet won over and which towards the close of the 

 century was to muster increasingly stronger forces. But Darwin himself was 

 influenced by the new conception of community life; it was from one of its 

 theorists that he obtained the actual idea for his theory of selection — 

 namely, Malthus, wherefore he is worthy of a place in the history of biology. 

 Thomas Robert Malthus (1766-1834) was the son of a landowner, 

 took his degree at Cambridge, was ordained priest, and obtained a curacy, 

 but at the same time devoted himself to the study of national economics. 

 On account of his writings he was given a professorship in London, where 

 he afterwards worked with great success. His father had been a personal 

 pupil of Rousseau and entertained rather radical views on the improvement 

 of the human race by a fair distribution of wealth — an idea which had then, 

 as it had later, many supporters. Against them there appeared the younger 

 Malthus with his chief work. The Principle of Population, which came out 

 in many editions and has been very widely discussed. Although himself a 

 liberal, he is in no wise a revolutionary optimist; he sees the cause of human 

 misery not in an unfair distribution of property, but in man's own habit of 

 living thoughtlessly and frivolously. The cure for this he sees in bringing 

 mankind up to exercise self-control, every man being taught not to raise 

 a family without definitely guaranteed means of subsistence. It is, he be- 

 lieves, a fact throughout nature, in plants, animals, and human beings, that 

 natural procreation is stronger than the possibilities of maintaining life; 

 from this there arises in nature a violent competition for the maintenance 

 of life, and in human life there is, further, helpless and ever-increasing misery 

 among the poverty-stricken classes, which no philosophical measures can 

 remedy. He then tries by means of historical and geographical-statistical 

 investigations to find out how it is that the increase in the population never 

 has followed, and does not follow now, its natural course, but is restricted, 

 more or less owing to the fact that the supply of maintenance is limited, 

 with the result that want, with its concomitant vice and crime, thins out 

 a great number of the poorest in each community. Upon its first appearance 

 this doctrine was violently opposed from both conservative and radical quar- 

 ters; it is not, however, within the scope of this work to enter into a detailed 

 discussion of the subject; it is sufficient to point out the above-mentioned 

 theory of competition, which gave Darwin the idea for his theory of selec- 

 tion. To this latter we shall now proceed. 



