6 



war, or vice, or other adverse conditions, or are prevented from 

 entering on the struggle by prudential restraints. He confessed 

 that, if the premises of Malthus were admitted, his conclusions 

 were inevitable, but he pointed out that the theory was really 

 limited in its application by a variety of causes, such as the actual 

 fecundity being less than possible fecundity ; that it was 

 historically true that food had always increased faster than 

 population, in spite of the alleged tendency to the contrary ; that 

 whole families and even whole races tended to become extinct, 

 under circumstances not involving any deficiency or difficulty of 

 subsistence {e.g., the extinction of the title of Baronets from the 

 failure of male heirs), and so forth, leading up to the conclusion 

 that, until the earth is fully inhabited, the sole condition enabling 

 population to increase without limit is that the population shall 

 spread as they multiply. The habitable parts of the globe are 

 not yet fully occupied. There is, therefore, at the present time 

 no necessary or irremediable overcrowding, though there are 

 unhappily local congestions of population and consequent 

 poverty. 



Coming to the main issue. Dr. Newsholme continued : — 

 Civilisation and, still more, Christian ethics, have introduced a 

 disturbing influence in the struggle, which may even go so far as 

 to stop the struggle altogether. " Love's divine self-abnegation " 

 imposes restraints on some of the competitors, and prevents them 

 from asserting and maintaining their natural superiority. There 

 is no better instance of this than the daily life of medical men, 

 who are " the chosen ministers of the higher ethics," and who 

 prevent the death of multitudes of weaklings and thus apparently 

 check the operation of natural selection. 



The careful treatment of the sick, diligent attention to 

 weak infants, asylums for idiots and for lunatics, hospitals for 

 general diseases and all kinds of special diseases, including small- 

 pox and other infectious complaints, convalescent homes, district 

 nursing, and Poor Law relief, all imply that the old individualism 

 which is characteristic of animal and savage life is giving place 

 to collectivism. Of such collectivism there are traces even among 

 animals. Ants and bees have an orderly polity on a large scale. 

 In man this collectivism is in our own country so far developed 

 that the pressure of the struggle for existence has been transferred, 

 in a large measure, from the individual to the body corporate. 

 For instance, no man in Great Britain need die of actual starva- 

 tion. The Poor Law machinery, cumbrous though it may be, ia 

 founded and worked on the principle that it is the duty of the 



