The Theory of Evolution 35 



ing out of the gross commercialism of later 

 Rome are too familiar to need description. It 

 was the spirit of private greed more than the 

 social spirit that urged the laissez-faire phi- 

 losophy, lulling men into the belief that if 

 each served Mammon whole-heartedly there 

 would emerge a natural law to insure justice. 

 The wish of the economic strong was the father 

 of the thought. 



4. The Theory of Malthus 



Though the economic philosophy exemplified 

 in Ricardo served as a satisfactory defense of 

 commercialism, the spirit of inquiry born of 

 the stirring life of a new era sought for deeper 

 foundations and a more comprehensive knowl- 

 edge of life. As a definite incentive to thought 

 there existed a steady market for ideas tend- 

 ing to provide a further sanction for the new 

 order of things. So thought reached beyond 

 a mere descriptive economics into historical 

 and biological foundations. In so doing the 

 motive of defending commercialism still held, 

 though in a lessening degree. It is certain that 

 Malthus, the thinker who gave to economic 

 apologetics the trend toward biology, was con- 

 sciously seeking to combat the critics of com- 



