TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION F. 1167 
the Factory Acts was not really at all a struggle between ‘economic science’ on 
the one hand and ‘mere sentiment’ on the other, but turned upon subordinating 
the lower ideal of physical economics—that of maximum production in given time— 
to the higher ideal of biological economics—that of maintenance and evolution of 
the population. Again, in the current dispute between individualist and socialist, 
we at once see that what the former has really taken his stand upon is simply the 
law of survival of the fittest, the principle of natural selection ; while the socialist 
position has its essential base in the later but equally valid conception of the 
practicability of artificial selection. And thus for the biologist a line of research is 
clear—to unite and define these two vaguely-discerned positions, and to apply 
them to the interpretation of civilised society, as he already does not only for 
animals but for the lower races. 
Nor is the general course of practical action less evident: the biologist must 
side with the individualist against the socialist in recognising that man can never 
shake himself wholly free from the iron grip of nature, yet, undiscouraged by this, 
since recognising the vast modifiability of life through its surroundings, must yet 
encourage the socialist in every rational effort to subordinate natural to artificial 
selection, and raise the struggle into the culture of existence. 
But ‘while philosophers are disputing about the government of men, hunger 
and love are performing the task.’ From the physiological standpoint all functions 
are summed into those two—into nutrition and reproduction, into individual life 
and the reproduction of it. Thus the economist, whether taking sides for or 
against Malthus, cannot seriously deny that he has entered on a biological inquiry, 
and that one of fundamental importance to his own science. Now Malthus” 
principles are: (1) that population tends to outrun subsistence, but meets with 
checks in so doing; these checks being (2) positive, as war, famine, disease, &e. ; 
or (3) preventive or moral. But the essential work of Darwin has lain in developing 
the first of these conceptions into that of the struggle for existence, as in recasting: 
the second and third into natural and artificial selection respectively. Yet can it 
be urged that any economist has adequately applied these to theory or practice P 
Nay, more; perhaps the most valuable result of Mr. Spencer's biological labours 
lies in the demonstration of a limit law of population wider than those discerned 
by either Malthus or Darwin, namely that, other things equal, ‘ multiplication and 
individuation vary inversely’; that is to say, the rate of reproduction of all living 
beings tends to be lowered as their individual development is raised, and conversely, 
Now, the practical outcomes of these three states of the theory of population are 
very different: for the economist who reads only Malthus there is no hope of 
curing the miseries due to over-population save by preventive checks of one sort or 
other; yet if he goes on to read Darwin, the advantage to the species of this struggle 
among the individuals becomes evident, and Jatsser-faire tends to resume the 
ascendant. Here in our day the discussion rests. Yet with what reason can they 
omit taking into account the law expounded by Spencer? And if this step be 
made, if the economist once really grasps the modern rather than the early theory 
of population, practical action at once assumes a new and higher aspect. For if 
individual life and rate of multiplication do indeed vary inversely, we have here 
the secret of the connection of poverty with progress—it lies primarily in the 
department of production, not that of distribution, let reformers of the latter say 
what they will; and the practical economists who would increase the well-being 
rather than the mere number of the population, must attempt a vast proportional 
increase in the industries which elevate life over those which merely maintain it, 
must make his ideal of progress for a long time lie rather in raising quality of 
production over mere quantity of it. Without keeping this clearly in view, the 
mere cheapening of food only multiplies poverty without increasing it, and our 
modest utopia of an adequate supply of penny dinners will but lead to an appalling 
demand for farthing ones. Yet reversed, the same iron law of wages, for such it is 
under its biological form, furnishes the economic justification of morals and of 
culture, the only yet sufficient hope of a general elevation of society, 
