84 FIELDS, FACTORIES AND WORKSHOPS. 



As to the poorer classes who always resent the influ- 

 ence of ideas circulating at a given time amid the 

 wealthier classes it deprived them of the very hope of 

 improvement ; it made them sceptical as to the promises- 

 of the social reformers; and to this day the most ad- 

 vanced reformers entertain doubts as to the possibility 

 of satisfying the needs of all, in case there should be 

 a claim for their satisfaction, and a temporary welfare 

 of the labourers resulted in a sudden increase of 

 population. 



Science, down to the present day, remains permeated 

 with Malthus's teachings. Political economy continues* 

 to base its reasoning upon a tacit admission of the im- 

 possibility of rapidly increasing the productive powers 

 of a nation, and of thus giving satisfaction to all wants. 

 That postulate stands, undiscussed, in the background 

 of whatever political economy, classical or socialist, has 

 to say about exchange value, wages, sale of labour 

 force, rent, exchange, and consumption. Political 

 economy never rises above the hypothesis of a limited 

 and insufficient supply of the necessaries of life; it takes it 

 for granted. And all theories connected with political 

 economy retain the same erroneous principle. Nearly 

 all socialists, too, admit the postulate. Nay, even in 

 biology (so deeply interwoven now with sociology) we 

 have recently seen the theory of variability of species 

 borrowing a quite unexpected support from its having 

 been connected by Darwin and Wallace with Malthus's 

 fundamental idea, that the natural resources must in- 

 evitably fail to supply the means of existence for the 

 rapidly multiplying animals and plants. In short, we 

 may say that Malthus's theory, by shaping into a pseudo- 

 scientific form the secret desires of the wealth-possessing 

 classes, became the foundation of a whole system of 

 practical philosophy, which permeates the minds of both 

 the educated and uneducated, and reacts (as practical 



