224 REV. JAMES WHITE, M.A., ON 
introduction “the struggle for existence, is the doctrine of 
Malthus applied to the whole animal and vegetable kingdom ” 
(4th ed., p. 4). In the life of Charles Darwin, published in 
1887, we have the following :— 
“‘T soon perceived that selection was the keynote of man’s success 
in making useful races of animals and plants. But how selection 
could be applied to organisms living in a state of Nature remained 
for some time a mystery to me. 
“In October, 1838, that is, fifteen months after I had begun my 
systematic enquiry, I happened to read for amusement Malthus 
on Population, and being well prepared to appreciate the struggle 
for existence which everywhere goes on from long continued obser- 
vations of the habits of animals and plants, it at once struck me 
that under these circumstances favourable variations would tend to 
be preserved and unfavourable ones destroyed. The result of this 
would be the formation of a new species. Here then at last I had 
got a theory by which to work.” 
From this it is obvious that the theory of Darwin with all its 
varied and far extending applications was the fruit in Darwin's 
mind of Malthus’s principle. All that wide extending harvest, 
which is briefly summed up in the word Darwinism ; a harvest 
yet far from fully reaped, has sprung from the living seed of 
this principle. Malthus observed the pressure of population on 
the means of subsistence. Darwin took up this observation 
and applied it in ways which its author never contemplated, 
and probably could never have apphed it. Other causes no 
doubt contributed to the production of Darwin’s Origin of 
Species: other influences brought their aid to fertilize that 
mind of almost unrivalled powers of observation and induction 
which has been the chief agent in this great development of 
thought, and for this is due to Darwin far beyond all others the 
evatitude of mankind. But the living seed is Malthus’s 
observation of the pressure of population on the meaus of 
subsistence. 
Dr. Alfred Russell Wallace in his very interesting and 
valuable autobiography, has most fully acknowledged his 
indebtedness to Malthus. Writing of his 21st year he records 
on. p. 222, vol. i, as follows :— 
“But perhaps the most important book I read was Malthus’s 
Principles of Population, which I greatly admired for its masterly 
summary of the facts and logical induction of its conclusions. It 
was the first work I had yet read treating of any of the problems of 
