LAWS OF MULTIPLICATION. 



267 



pressure of population, constantly tends to diminish the rate of fer- 

 tility; in other words, this cause of progress tends to disappear as it 

 achieves its full effect. The acute pressure of population, with its atten- 

 dant evils, thus tends to cease as a more and more highly individuated 

 race busies itself with its increasingly complex yet normal and 

 pleasurable activities, its rate of reproduction meanwhile descending 

 toward that minimum required to make good its inevitable losses. 



V. Summary of the Population Question. — The general 

 question, so far as yet developed, may now be conveniently sum- 

 marized in the accompanying tabular form. Here the stage of 

 knowledge reached by each author, together with any practical 

 applications therefrom deduced, may be read horizontally, while 

 the historic development of each separate line of conceptions may 

 be traced vertically. 



From such a summary, brief as it is, the main steps in the develop- 

 ment of our knowledge are clear enough, but a deeper analysis is 

 required before final exposition or complete application is possible. 

 Nor, when we note how vast the progress of science through the 

 advance in precision and extension effected upon the conception of 

 Malthus* by Darwin, will the utility of such increasing elaboration be 



* It is also interesting to compare Malthus's view of population, tending to 

 increase in geometrical proportion and substance only in arithmetical, with 

 Spencer's demonstration of the limit of growth already summarized (see p. 

 204), the more so when we bear in mind that reproduction is discontinuous 

 growth. The precise statement of Malthus becomes confirmed, as regards the 

 cell, if not the cell-aggregate. 



