39 
hag been a seat of huge kingdoms and empires. The valley of the 
Helmund in Afghanistan, we are told by a recent traveller, is 
“ strewn with the relics of deal kingdoms.” Along the valleys in 
China, among the sands of Gobi, and in the forests of India, 
unnumbered ruins and gigantic structures tell us of vanished 
_ peoples. And the Euphrates and Tigris valleys are still yielding 
their testimony to the existence under the old Assyrian and Baby- 
lonian empires of a magnificent system of ‘‘ intensive cultivation,” 
as it has been well called, which supplied the wants of huge 
multitudes of people. The ruins in Asia Minor tell the same tale. 
Look at that part of the world, and you would say population has 
wonderfully decreased ; look at modern Europe, and it appears to 
have increased ; the simple fact being fluctuation, here at one time, 
there at another. 
_ What of Africa? In the palmy days of Carthage 300 Lybian 
cities paid her tribute ; how many “cities” are there now ? When 
Agathocles, king of Syracuse, invaded that part of northern Africa 
in the 3rd century B.C. “the whole country lay like a garden 
before him, covered with wealthy towns and the luxurious villas of 
the Carthaginian merchants. Two hundred towns or more 
surrendered.” Some further idea of the geometrical increase of 
North Africa is afforded by Gibbon, who tells us that 500 episcopal 
- churches (i.e bishops’ sees with all their surroundings) were over- 
turned by the hostile fury of the Donatists, the Vandals and the 
Moors. But how has the Malthusian Theory worked since then ? 
Where are those peoples now ? 
If we turn to the New World the records are necessarily nearly all 
prehistoric ; but undoubtedly Mexico and Peru were, when invaded, 
the seats not only of higher civilisations than at present, but of at 
least as thick populations as now, if not much thicker. And the 
earth mounds in the United States, the cliff habitatations in the 
Rocky Mountains, the arenitectural ruins in Central America, tell 
us yet again of former centres of life and activity. 
No; the earth is little if at all more crowded now than then, as 
far back as we can trace. There is nothing to back up the geomet- 
rical ratio; at any rate nothing which advances it beyond a 
tendency,” which can no more be realised than the asymptote can 
touch its curve. 
What then are we to think of the following emphatic statement 
of Grant Allen ?—‘‘ The world is perpetually over populated. It is 
not, as many good people fearfully imagine, on a half comprehension 
. of the Malthusian principle shortly going to be over-populated ; it 
is now, it has always been, and it always will be, pressed close up 
to the utmost possible limit of population.” With reference to 
man, I have proved that this cannot be true, and whatI have to. 
