328 Mutual Aid as a Law of Nature 



population increases in a geometric ratio, so that 

 he gets the following series of numbers^: 



Population i 2 4 8 16 32 64 128 256 

 Subsistence 1234567 8 9 



But the true theory, if we take into account the law 

 of acceleration whereby ten men working together 

 and practising the specialization and the division 

 of labour, produce not ten times as much as each 

 one separately, but one hundred times as much, 

 would be as follows: 



Population 123 4 5 67 89 10 



Productive power i 49 16 25 36 49 64 81 100 



According to Malthus every increase of population 

 results in a decrease of prosperity and a scarcity 

 of foodstuffs. According to a true theory of 

 society, which takes into account the universal 

 fact of association, an increase of population with- 

 in the limits of an association should result in an 

 increase of productive power and therefore in an 

 increase of wealth, and this is what we see actually 

 happening in all civilized countries. 



Malthus was the first to propose the hard and 

 pitiless doctrine afterwards adopted by Spencer 

 and the other worshippers of the anti-social, anti- 

 Christian philosophy of force, that all charity 

 should be abolished and the unfit should be al- 

 lowed to go to the wall. He states his conclusion 

 as follows : 



'T. R. Malthus, An Essay on Population, vol. i., pp. 10, li. 



