Evolutionism and Darwinism. 59 



ness of human society in the constant tendency of 

 population to multiply faster than the means of 

 subsistence. While human beings tend to in 

 crease in a geometrical ratio, food can at best be 

 increased only in an arithmetical ratio. The in 

 evitable result is starvation. And starvation is 

 the ultimate check to population. But although 

 the ultimate, it is not the immediate check ; since, 

 in ordinary circumstances, the unrestrained in 

 crease of human beings is prevented by pruden 

 tial considerations with regard to marriage, by 

 brutal and revolting practices, and by such ruth 

 less destroyers as disease, war, pestilence, and the 

 whole train of human miseries. 



Such is the principle of Mai thus. It has be 

 come a constituent part of political economy, 

 giving its tone, one might almost say, to the treat 

 ise of Mill. And it has become the germjnant 

 idea of biology, accounting, in the hands of Darwin, 

 for the formation of varieties and the origin of 

 species of plants and animals in a state of nature. 



Let us now endeavor to follow Darwin s account 

 of the process. 



The first moment is the excessive fecundity of 

 nature, which Darwin was enabled to realize from 

 his observation of the teeming, self-strangling life 

 of the forests of Brazil. But to take a less favor- 



