164 THE LAW OF BIRTHS AND DEATHS 



the resources of any country, and even of the world, 

 are limited, it follows that the increase of population 

 must rapidly exceed these resources unless you can keep 

 down the birthrate. Unless you can do this your efforts 

 for social progress will be self-defeating. 



The only suggestion put forward by Malthus as to the 

 means of keeping down the birthrate was that the mass 

 of the people should abstain from sexual intercourse, 

 leaving that as a privilege for the rich. If this proposal 

 aroused no enthusiasm among social reformers, it was 

 probably because they felt, and probably Malthus felt 

 too, that 



You may as well forbid the mountain pines 

 To wag their high tops, and to make no noise 

 When they are fretted with the gusts of heaven. 



Malthus was perfectly sound in his logic reasoning 

 from the facts as known to him. When he wrote the 

 theory of evolution was merely in embryo and not a 

 serious intellectual factor. But his logic, perfectly sound 

 so far as it goes, is rendered futile by the one small factor 

 which he had overlooked, the law by which Nature had 

 provided for the difficulty. But for this Malthus would 

 have been perfectly right, and social evolution would 

 have been self-defeating. 



This would also have been true of evolution in general. 

 For it is an obvious deduction from the theory of evolution 

 that to produce a superior type a superior environment 

 is necessary, since a type must necessarily be adapted to 

 its environment. It is impossible to have an improved 

 environment without a reduced deathrate, for the con- 

 ditions of an improved environment are those which 

 increase the survival-capacity of the organism. But it 

 is obviously impossible to have a reduced deathrate in 



