156 PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS—SECTION F. 
command of a continent of the richest land upon the globe is 
too feeble to support in comfort a few insignificant wandering 
tribes. 
The broad conclusions to be drawn from the foregoing con- 
siderations are :—That the social condition of mankind cannot 
be improved, or even maintained, unless a considerable proportion 
of the aggregate primary satisfactions produced be specially 
devoted continuously to agencies set apart for the maintenance, 
creation, discovery and improvement of such machines, tools, 
instruments and skilled contrivances as promise to add most 
effectually to man’s power in transforming the forces of nature 
to the service of man. That the devotion of such a large propor- 
tion of created products to such purposes, entailing such a tax 
upon the aggregate store of Aresent satisfactions, for and upon 
the individual share which otherwise might fall to each consumer, 
can only be secured by society living under peculiarly favourable 
conditions, such as has already been indicated. This involves 
favourable natural conditions as regards extent and quality of 
soil and climate ; maximum of skill and energy, tempered by the 
reasonable maximum of allowance for leisure and rest ; division 
of labour—each division carefully disciplined, apportioned, and 
maintained in strict relation to the probable amount of the 
different satisfactions and needs required, and each member of 
the community in the dependant and under tutelary conditions— 
carefully trained in strictly corresponding proportions to that 
branch of work in which it has been predetermined that the 
individual must in the future devote his life’s service; the 
adoption of such regulations as will restrict the number of 
consumers and dependants within reasonable limits—that is, 
within the present limits of the producing powers of the society — 
to provide a reasonable quota of satisfactions to each individual. 
The last provision involves the great population difficulty. 
PoPpuLaTION DIFFICULTIES, OR THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE. 
Darwin (page 52, “Origin of Species”) has observed “ that 
in a state of nature almost every full-grown plant annually 
produces seed, and amongst animals there are few which do not 
annually pair. Hence we may confidently assert that all plants 
and animals are tending to increase at a geometrical ratio—that 
all would rapidly stock every station in which they could anyhow 
exist. And this geometrical tendency to increase must be checked 
by destruction at some period of life,” and, as an inevitable 
consequence, he goes on to add ‘‘ that each individual lives by a 
struggle at some period of its life, that heavy destruction falls 
either on the young or old during each generation, or at recurrent 
intervals. Lighten any check, mitigate the destruction ever so 
little, and the number of the species will almost instantaneously 
increase to any amount.” 
