898 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XX. No. 522. 



nomic development and evolution that 

 brought into existence, through the slow 

 steps necessary to produce it, what we rec- 

 ognize as the earth ; and we appreciate more 

 and more that this is to the greater glory 

 of the first great cause than that formerly 

 assumed method, the result of a literal 

 reading of Genesis. 



Science is no longer a menace to religion. 

 It has, to be sure, overturned dogmas, upset 

 superstitions, and changed the theological 

 thought of the world, but it has left with 

 us the evidence of that divine economy in 

 creation which is so essential in considering 

 the works of the Almighty ; and as the re- 

 sult of increased knowledge which science 

 has brought us the human race is happier, 

 and more generally recognizes that all 

 things must grow slowly, steadily, surely 

 to that stage of - perfection which must 

 mark the works of the Stipreme Architect. 



If this has been the result in the realms 

 of theology, so long ruled by dogma and 

 artificial tenets, science must have had 

 some influence in shaping those matters 

 which belong to the every-day life of man, 

 his business relations, and his social en- 

 vironment. For the present hour I am 

 to consider what this influence has been in 

 overturning, modifying, and extending the 

 theories of economists, and see whether 

 political economy owes anything to science, 

 or what science must and can do in reshap- 

 ing and extending the great laws of the 

 business world. 



First, we must consider that peculiar and 

 interesting doctrine known as Malthusian- 

 ism. The doctrine set forth by Malthus 

 comprehended more than his celebrated 

 theory relative to the encroachments of 

 population upon the food supply. These 

 supplemental doctrines involved what is 

 popularly known as the iron law of wages, 

 the wages fund, and the law of diminish- 

 ing returns, all of which have by scientific 

 thought and investigation given way in 



large degree to theories more rational and 

 more in line with the facts. 



Concretely, Malthus announced the 

 theory that population increased in a 

 geometrical and food in an arithmetical 

 ratio, but after the announcement he con- 

 tented himself with a more general proposi- 

 tion that population, unless checked by war, 

 poverty and other calamities, tended to in- 

 crease faster than sustenance. Malthus was 

 supported by other writers. There is, of 

 course, something in this doctrine relative 

 to the pressure of population upon the food 

 supply which must be admitted as contain- 

 ing some truth, and at the time Malthus 

 wrote it was supposed to contain the truth. 

 The author of the theory, however, did not 

 anticipate and could not foresee the great 

 changes which would come in the way of 

 the cultivation of the land and in other 

 ways to increase the food supply relative 

 to the increase of population. 



The time may come, to be sure, when the 

 Malthusian theory will be revived, but it 

 is not in our day, nor will it be in our cen- 

 tury, for scientific thought almost com- 

 pletely overturned the theory and has re- 

 lieved it of its strength in exciting the fears 

 of economists or of philosophers that the 

 world was gradually but surely coming to 

 that position where it could not supply its 

 population with food, and that some 

 method of checking population must be the 

 resort. The broadening of the area of 

 supply through discovery and the taking 

 up of vast tracts of land were the imme- 

 diate means of depriving the doctrine of its 

 force, but later on intensive agriculture 

 and the discoveries of science succeeded in 

 relegating the theory to the past. It is 

 perfectly evident that science has accom- 

 plished more in reducing the theory to the 

 minimum than all other forces combined; 

 for transportation and telegraphy, by 

 which famines are avoided or minimized, 

 by which prices are equalized, by which the 



