THE LAW OF MALTHUS.

Press, Volume LXV, Issue 19726, 17 September 1929, Page 13

THE LAW OF MALTHUS.

TO TBS BDITOB OF THE PBESB Sir,—One of the inevitable consequences of the law of Malthus (referred to in your leader of September 7th) is thaft a species on which it unceasingly operates, does not vary much in numbers from year to year. A time comes for every wild species when, says Huxley, "as many members must be destroyed as are born." -The fact that man is the only animal that is increasing in numbers may therefore, I suppose, be taken as sufficient proof that, so far as he is concerned, " Malthus's thesis must no longer be regarded as a truism." In the 128 years whieb have elapsed since Malthus wrote his epochal work, man's numbers have doubled, and yet, far from there being any absolute pressure on his means of existence, the possibilities of modern agriculture are such that his ability to produce on a fraction of the earth's surface enough food for the present human population of the globe .does not, as far as I know, admit of doubt.

It was, as is well known, the law of Malthus that furnished Darwin and Wallace with a key to the origin of species by the natural selection of the fittest in a Malthusian struggle for existence. Well, if the following remarks of Sir E. Kay Lankester are valid, the thesis of Malthus is not only not a truism for present-day man but ceased to be a truism for man. ages before the dawn of written history. '' The origin of man by the process of natural selection is one chapter in man's history, another one begins with the consideration of his further development and his diffusion over the surface of the globe. The mental qualities in man . . • have to a very large extent, if not entirely, cut him off from the general operation of that process of natural selection and survival of th«

fittest, which np to their appearance had been the law of the living world . . . . Knowledge, reason, self-con-sciousness, will, are the attributes of

volition of man . . . has become in Nature an imperium in imperio, which has profoundly modified, not only man's own history, but that of the whole living world and the face of the planet on which he exists . . . then we say that man is Nature's rebel. Where Nature says 'Die!', man says 1 will live.' »

The unassuaged severity of the Malthusian struggle, and its straightout removal of the unfit by death, has no real equivalence in the competition for profits and for jobs which goes on continually in the commercial world and with which it is ' frequently confused: particularly by monetarily-suc-cessful or favoured persons who lay the flattering unction to their Bonis that they are Nature's chosen ones: though, to be sure, many of them would perish miserably if brought into prolonged contact with raw, elemental forces. None the less, it is clear that man cannot go on increasing in numbers without arriving, sooner or later, at a biological bridge of Beresinc, without a return, that is, to Nature's appalling method of selecting only the fittest in a Malthusian sense. Simple calculation shows that the possibility of such a return is no mere figment of the imagination, arid thatj in connexion therewith, the present is heavy with destiny. It shows that, should racial numbers continue to be added to at their present respective annual rates, the world will be, 141 years hence, well-nigh hopelessly over-crowded, the populousness having increased in that period from one person per 7.4 acres to one per 2.5 acres of arable land; or, in actual numbers, from 1750 to 5222 millions. The arable land of the globe is reckoned at 13,000 million acres, but even if we rookon it at 33,000 million, the total acreage outside of the Arctic regions, there will be, on the foregoing assumption, 26,470 million humans, or one to every 1.24 acres, in so short time from now as 301 years 1

"Mankind," writes Professor J. A. TKomson, "has some 13,000,000,000 acre® at his disposal. How many of these will each individual require? With all the possibilities of modern agriculture at our command and as many more as we are justified in hoping for as practicable, the minimum that each of us would be doing with is 2.5 acres without allowing any. for a cow." Nature may yet inflict an unsoeakably terrible punishment on her insurgent son."—Yours, etc., AN ENQUIRING LAYMAN. Cfrevmouth, Sept. 14th, 1929.