"Malthus" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... commerce. In the opinion, however, of an old sub-matron of the Enfans Trouvees (who looked over my shoulder while sketching, and whom, by way of something to say, I ignorantly complimented on her fine family of grandchildren), there is nothing, or, according to Malthus, much to complain of in the former respect. "Ah, Monsieur, que voulez vous? ce sont les militaires, ils vont par ci, ils vont par la, et puis—voila des enfans, et ou ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... commanded the world's attention. It was the outcome of thirty years' work and thought by a worker and thinker of genius, but it was yet more than that—it was the outcome, also, of the work and thought of another man of genius fifty years before. The book of Malthus on the Principle of Population, mainly founded on the fact that animals increase in a geometrical ratio, and therefore, if unchecked, must encumber the earth, had been generally forgotten, and was only recalled with a sneer. But the genius of Darwin recognised in it a deeper meaning, and ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... expensive to marry—some truth in that, but more selfishness: here's young Mr. Henry has set you a good example. Your practice in your professions, I suppose, puts you as much at ease in the world by this time as he is. Malthus, you know, whom I saw you studying the other day, objects only to people marrying before they can maintain a family. Alfred, when I was at the Hills, I heard of a certain Miss Leicester. If you shall think of marrying before ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... ancestral possession of Haddon Hall, Stafford House, etc., but merely that the founder of the family lived under the shadow of greatness. In compounds -house is generally treated as in "workus," e.g. Bacchus (Chapter VIII), Bellows, Brewis, Duffus (dove), Kirkus, Loftus, Malthus, Windus (wynd, Chapter XIII). In connection with Woodhouse it must be remembered that this name was given to the man who played the part of a "wild man of the woods" in processions and festivities. William Power, skinner, called "Wodehous," died in London in 1391. Of similar origin is ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... Wilson, Clarkson, Moore, Hallam, Landor, Scott, Roscoe, Wellington,[1] Wordsworth, Malthus, Robert Hall, Rogers, Ricardo, Taylor, Campbell, Mill, Romilly, Joanna Baillie, Chalmers, Edgeworth, Southey, Coleridge, Hannah More, Gifford, Heber, Dalton, Jeffrey, Bentham, Davy, Sydney Smith, Brown, Wollaston, ...
— Letters on International Copyright; Second Edition • Henry C. Carey
... better general education extended to the mass of the people. It is desirable that the community should be indoctrinated with sound views of property, and with the dependence of wealth, upon the true principle of population, discovered by Malthus, all which they are ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... constant increase in the return to labour, and constantly increasing power to determine for themselves for whom they will work, and what shall be their reward. This view is, however, in direct opposition to the theory of the occupation of land taught in the politico-economical school of which Malthus and Ricardo were the founders. By them we are assured that the settler commences always on the low and rich lands, and that, as population increases, men are required to pass toward the higher and poorer lands—and of course up the hill—with constantly diminishing return to labour, ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... Checks on growth of population.—We need not discuss in its wider aspect the question whether our population tends to increase faster than the means of subsistence. Disciples of Malthus, who urge the growing pressure of population on the food supply, are sometimes told that so far as this argument applies to England, the growth of wealth is faster than the growth of population, and that as modern facilities for exchange enable any quantity of this wealth to be transferred ...
— Problems of Poverty • John A. Hobson
... essays by Mr. Phillips, Horace Greeley, and other Protectionists, will probably constitute another. The Collection now embraces Quesnay, Turgot, Dupont Nemours, Le Tronne, the Says, Galliani, de Montyon, Condillac, Lavoisier, Adam Smith, Hume, Ricardo, Malthus, Bentham, and a dozen more. The only American name in the list is that of Franklin quoted in the first volume of the Melanges, edited ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... lost sight of a view of the world which filled with deep-seated melancholy the founders of our Political Economy. Before the eighteenth century mankind entertained no false hopes. To lay the illusions which grew popular at that age's latter end, Malthus disclosed a Devil. For half a century all serious economical writings held that Devil in clear prospect. For the next half century he was chained up and out of sight. Now perhaps we have ...
— The Economic Consequences of the Peace • John Maynard Keynes
... Institute, with its extraordinary schemes, and machinery of Corresponding Boards and the like, we shall not so much as glance. Enough for us to understand that Heuschrecke is a disciple of Malthus; and so zealous for the doctrine, that his zeal almost literally eats him up. A deadly fear of Population possesses the Hofrath; something like a fixed idea; undoubtedly akin to the more diluted forms of Madness. Nowhere, in that ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... successful realization of this idea was a surprise to many, but as a surprise it was nothing to that received by the mildly protestant sociologists and biologists when irrefutable facts exploded the doctrine of Malthus. With leisure and joy in the world; with an immensely higher standard of living; and with the enormous spaciousness of opportunity for recreation, development, and pursuit of beauty and nobility and all the higher attributes, the birth-rate fell, and fell astoundingly. ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... witty yet sympathetic estimate of the early Puritans is yet to be surpassed, writes: "It hardly needs to be mentioned after this, that the conditions of life there were not at all those for which Malthus subsequently invented his theory of inhospitality to infants. Population was sparce; work was plentiful; food was plentiful; and the arrival in the household of a new child was not the arrival of a new appetite among a brood of children already half-fed—it was rather the arrival of a new helper ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... different periods of time, it is clear that neither any one substance, nor even the combination of all manufactured goods, can furnish us with an invariable unit by which to form our scale of estimation. Mr Malthus has proposed for this purpose to consider a day's labour of an agricultural labourer, as the unit to which all value should be referred. Thus, if we wish to compare the value of twenty yards of broad cloth in Saxony at the present time, with that of the ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage
... Cloudesley (1830), are much inferior. In addition to these works G. brought out an elaborate Life of Chaucer in 2 vols. (1803), An Essay on Sepulchres (1808), containing much fine thought finely expressed, A History of the Commonwealth, an Essay against the theories of Malthus (q.v.), and his last work, Lives of the Necromancers. For some time he engaged in the publishing business, in which, however, he ultimately proved unsuccessful. In his later years he had the office of Yeoman Usher of the Exchequer conferred upon him. G. entered in 1801 into ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... reflection will inevitably prove it to be true. The war, however, is not constant, but recurrent in a slight degree at short periods, and more severely at occasional more distant periods; and hence its effects are easily overlooked. It is the doctrine of Malthus applied in most cases with tenfold force. As in every climate there are seasons, for each of its inhabitants, of greater and less abundance, so all annually breed; and the moral restraint which in some small degree checks the increase of ...
— Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society - Vol. 3 - Zoology • Various
... its source in the power possessed by land of producing more than is necessary to supply the wants of the men who cultivate it. I would ask Malthus why successful labor should entitle the idle to a ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... the future centuries it is destined to be larger. And this brings us to that old bugbear that has been so frequently laughed away and that still persists in raising its grisly head—namely, the doctrine of Malthus. While man's increasing efficiency of food-production, combined with colonisation of whole virgin continents, has for generations given the apparent lie to Malthus' mathematical statement of the Law of Population, nevertheless the essential significance of his doctrine ...
— The Human Drift • Jack London
... of controversial writers are seldom free from this fallacy. The attempts, for instance, to disprove the population doctrines of Malthus, have been mostly cases of ignoratio elenchi. Malthus has been supposed to be refuted if it could be shown that in some countries or ages population has been nearly stationary; as if he had asserted that population always increases in a given ratio, or had not expressly declared ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... were laying the foundations for the new science of political economy and endeavoring to ascertain how the condition of the masses could be improved. While investigating this subject, Thomas Robert Malthus (1766-1834), an Episcopal clergyman, announced his famous proposition, since known as the Malthusian theorem, that population tends to increase faster than the means of subsistence. Political economists ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... eighteenth century, while it was falling off in the neighbouring provinces of France. The worthy intendant thought the people sadly wanting in 'intelligence, activity, and practical sense,' and seems indeed, like a Malthusian before Malthus, half-inclined to attribute the phenomena of increase and multiplication in Artois to these defects. It would surprise him, I fancy, to look on the people and the land of Artois to-day. The land has become one of the most fertile and prosperous regions of France; the people, unaffected to any ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... the small pleasures of to-day, but for the future security and improvement of the race,—in fact for 'progress.' If only the cake were not cut, but was allowed to grow in the geometrical proportion predicted by Malthus of population, but not less true of compound interest, perhaps a day might come when there would be at last the enjoyment of our labors. In that day, overwork, overcrowding and underfeeding would come to an end and men secure of the ...
— The Settlement of Wage Disputes • Herbert Feis
... in organic evolution express themselves more or less in the industrial phase of human society. Thus, the first factor, the multiplication of organisms through reproduction in some geometric ratio, was first studied by Malthus, an economist in the beginning of the nineteenth century, and exclusively with reference to its effect upon economic conditions. Malthus perceived the tendency for human beings to multiply in some geometric ...
— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood
... resting on a still vigorous medievalism, thrust apart. Nature was brought into nearer relation with Man, and Man with God, and God with Nature and with Man. In one aspect, not the least striking, it was a "return to Nature"; economists from Adam Smith to Malthus worked out the laws of man's dependence upon the material world; poets and idealists from Rousseau to Wordsworth discovered in a life "according to nature" the ideal for man; sociologists from Hume ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... cannot do without his potato as an adjunct; but the error of the Irishman is in making it the mainstay of his life. The words of Malthus in this connection put the matter in a nutshell, much as he has been abused for his theory of the effects of the potato on population. 'When the common people of a country,' he says, 'live principally upon the dearest grain, as they do in England on wheat, they ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... POPULATION. But reproduction has been in human history promiscuous, and increase of population has been less a problem to moralists and economists than has its restriction. The danger of over-increase in population was first powerfully stated by Malthus in his Essay on Population. Malthus contended in effect that population always tends to increase up to the limit of subsistence, and gives indications, unless increase is checked, of increasing beyond it. In its extreme form, as it appeared in Malthus's first edition ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... be accepted as feasible, we must examine whether the physical conditions of production impose an unalterable veto, or whether they are capable of being sufficiently modified by science and organization. Two connected doctrines must be considered in examining this question: First, Malthus' doctrine of population; and second, the vaguer, but very prevalent, view that any surplus above the bare necessaries of life can only be produced if most men work long hours at monotonous or painful tasks, leaving little leisure for a civilized existence or ...
— Proposed Roads To Freedom • Bertrand Russell
... until at last—though that day may be far off—the earth will not be able to support its inhabitants. I will not trouble you with a detailed repetition and justification of the well-known principle of my renowned countryman, Malthus. Much has been urged against that principle, but hitherto nothing of a convincing character. That the increase in a geometric ratio of the number of living individuals has no other natural check than that of a deficiency of food is a natural law to which not merely man but every ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... we grow more wise When Radcliffe's page we cease to prize, And turn to Malthus, and to Hervey, For tombs, or cradles topsy-turvy; 'Tis sweet to flatter one's dear self, And altered feelings vaunt, when pelf Is passion, poetry, romance; — And all our faith's in three per cents." R. ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... science which will, in our opinion, be in future looked upon as his great contribution to the progress of thought. His work on political economy not only put into thorough repair the structure raised by Adam Smith, Malthus, and Ricardo, but raised it at least one story higher. His inestimable "System of Logic" was a revolution. It hardly needs, of course, to be said that he owed much to his predecessors,—that he borrowed from Whewell much of his classification, ...
— John Stuart Mill; His Life and Works • Herbert Spencer, Henry Fawcett, Frederic Harrison and Other
... to Bentham, no writer of this period influenced educated opinion so powerfully as Malthus, whose Essay on Population, first published anonymously in 1798, attracted comparatively little attention until 1803, when it was republished in a maturer form. No work has ever been more persistently misrepresented. While he shows that population, if unchecked, will surely increase in a ratio ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... In 1852 a baronetcy was conferred upon him, and in the following year he was made a D.C.L. of Oxford. His literary activity continued till within a short time of his death, the chief works he published in addition to his History being the Principles of Population (1840), in answer to Malthus; a Life of Marlborough (1847, 2nd edition greatly enlarged, 1852); and the Lives of Lord Castlereagh and Sir C. Stewart (1861.) This latter, based on MS. material preserved at Wynyard Park, is still of value, not only ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... torrent of cheap fiction. This perennial fountain has long ceased to flow, yet has its disappearance left no unsatisfied void. The procreation of human kind has failed to support the elaborate theory of Malthus, but had the sage philosopher transferred his calculations from the sons of men to works of fiction, then indeed he might stand forth the prophet of a striking truth. The extensive plain over which this flood is spread seems even to be extending its ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... more it demands An attention it does not deserve; and expands Beyond the dimensions which ev'n crinoline, When possess'd by a fair face, and saucy Eighteen, Is entitled to take in this very small star, Already too crowded, as I think, by far. You read Malthus ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... century upon this point was little short of insane. The melancholy doctrine of Malthus had perverted the public mind. Because it was difficult for a poor man to bring up a family, the hasty conclusion was reached that a family ought not to be brought up. But the war has entirely inverted and corrected this point of view. The father and mother who were able to send six sturdy, ...
— The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice • Stephen Leacock
... to be. He was not without success in the circus which he subsequently joined, but he was improvident. His income increased in arithmetical progression, and his expenditure in geometrical. This, as Dr. Micawber and Professor Malthus have shown us, must end in disaster. Looking at it from the noblest point of view—the autobiographical—I saw that a marriage with Hugo ...
— Marge Askinforit • Barry Pain
... to have a family, and were disappointed if this hope were not fulfilled. That it was possible to limit the number of their offspring, or even to avoid parenthood entirely, was of course unknown to them. Nowadays all this is changed, and the doctrines of Malthus obtain everywhere. ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby
... what is rent? what is value? Monsieur Say, the most sparkling of them all, assures us that the English writers are obscure, by their confounding, like Smith, the denomination of labour. The vivacious Gaul cries out to the grave Briton, Mr. Malthus, "If I consent to employ your word labour, you must understand me," so and so! Mr. Malthus says, "Commodities are not exchanged for commodities only; they are also exchanged for labour;" and when the hypochondriac Englishman, with dismay, foresees "the glut of markets," and concludes that ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... Look behind the phenomenon, and you will find the cause; and the finding will make you shudder. And if only those shudder who are free from stain, the shuddering will be scarcely audible. Onan and Malthus as household gods are worse ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... the earth as presented by Lyell, the theory of population of Malthus, and the Origin of the Species and the Descent of Man by Darwin changed the preconceived notions of the creation of man. Slowly and without ostentation science everywhere had been forcing all nature into unity controlled by universal laws. Traditional belief was not prepared for the bold statement ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... Pertaining to Malthus and his doctrines. Malthus believed in artificially limiting population, but found that it could not be done by talking. One of the most practical exponents of the Malthusian idea was Herod of Judea, though all the famous soldiers have been of the ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... philosopher, a feudal queen, amid the blessings and the praise of dependent hundreds—that was my new ideal; for that I turned the whole force of my intellect to the study of history, of social and economic questions. From Bentham and Malthus to Fourier and Proudhon, I read them all. I made them all fit into that idol-temple of self which I was rearing, and fancied that I did my duty, by becoming one of the great ones of the earth. My ideal was not the crucified Nazarene, but some Hairoun Alraschid, ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... MALTHUS, THOMAS R., an English economist, born near Dorking, in Surrey; is famous as the author of an "Essay on the Principle of Population," of which the first edition appeared in 1798, and the final, greatly enlarged, in 1803; the publication provoked much hostile criticism, as it propounded ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... dealt with the sexual relation, and advocated, from the standpoint of an experienced medical man, what is roughly known as "free love"; the second was entirely medical, dealing with diseases; the third consisted of a very clear and able exposition of the law of population as laid down by Malthus, and insisted—as John Stuart Mill had done—that it was the duty of married persons to voluntarily limit their families within their means of subsistence. Mr. Bradlaugh, in the National Reformer, in reviewing the book, stated that it was ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant
... (all the new school of land-agents are rigid political economists), taught by their prophet Malthus, ascribed the famine and every other social evil to surplus population, and to the incurably lazy and thriftless habits of the Celtic race. According to them the potato blight had only hastened an inevitable catastrophe. ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... for example, in the arithmetical and geometrical ratios, set up in political economy by the celebrated Mr. Malthus. His numbers will go on smoothly enough, 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, as representing the principle of population among mankind, and 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, the means of subsistence; but restiff and uncomplying nature refuses to conform herself ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... pupils James Mill is the ablest, Cobbett, a vigorous and idiomatic writer of English, in the course of his long life advocated all varieties of political principle. In political science we have the accurate McCulloch; Malthus, known through his Theory of Population; and Ricardo, the most original thinker ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... Condorcet and Godwin, encountered a drastic criticism from Malthus, whose Essay on the Principle of Population appeared in its first form anonymously in 1798. Condorcet had foreseen an objection which might be raised as fatal to the realisation of his future state. ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... English attention to the necessity of looking after the national defences; and it had a powerful effect. Westward of Dorking there is fine scenery, amid which is the little house known as the "Rookery," where Malthus the political economist was born in 1766. Wotton Church stands alongside the road near by, almost hid by aged trees—a building of various dates, with a porch and stunted tower. Here John Evelyn was taught when a child, and the graves of his family are in a chapel opening from the north ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... feelings. Woman's mission in his eyes is simply babies; to which is superadded the duty of making the father comfortable. But the high prices of living are teaching people who have never heard of Malthus or of Mill the necessity of celibacy; and women must find something else to do ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... increases, more pasturage is needed and similar results follow. Even after agriculture is well established and commerce is well begun, as in Ancient Greece, colonies have a like origin. In the England of the nineteenth century Malthus and his followers taught the tendency of population to outgrow the means of subsistence—a tendency overcome only by restraints on the growth of population, or by new inventions that enable new sources of supply to be secured or that render ...
— The Making of a Nation - The Beginnings of Israel's History • Charles Foster Kent and Jeremiah Whipple Jenks
... while he was near a bridge in Dublin. "In that moment I had the result of fifteen years' labor." Darwin gathers material during his voyages, spends a long time observing plants and animals, then through the chance reading of Malthus' book, hits upon and formulates his theory. In literary and artistic creation ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... doctrine of uniformitarianism proposed by Lyell, second, his own observations of wild life in many lands and his analysis of the breeder's results with domesticated animals, and third, the writings of Malthus dealing with overpopulation. As Darwin had read the works of Buffon, Lamarck, and Erasmus Darwin, his grandfather, who had written a famous treatise under the title of "Zoonomia," he was familiar with the evidences ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton
... for it and for mankind on the earth. Regarding the profit system as a God-ordained necessity, there could be no doubt in his mind that it was mankind which must, under the circumstances, get off the earth. People called Malthus a cold-blooded philosopher. Perhaps he was, but certainly it was only common humanity that, so long as the profit system lasted, a red flag should be hung out on the planet, warning souls not to land except at their ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... killed people, but of a man who sits down and conscientiously tries to imagine what it is like to kill people. It is essentially the same kind of ferocity in imaginative fiction as the ferocity of Nietzsche in lyrical philosophy or of Malthus in speculative politics. When Mr Kipling talks of men carved in battle to the nasty noise of beef-cutting upon the block, or of men falling over like the rattle of fire-irons in the fender and the grunt of a pole-axed ...
— Rudyard Kipling • John Palmer
... unproductive labourers,) not less than productive peasants, the emperor's envoy replies—"Yet with a difference, general;" and the difference implies Sir James's scale, his vine-dresser being the equatorial case between the two extremes of the envoy.—Malthus again, in his population-book, contends for a mathematic difference between animal and vegetable life, in respect to the law of increase, as though the first increased by geometrical ratios, the last by arithmetical! No proposition more worthy of laughter; since both, when ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... Malthus does not, so far as I can ascertain, face the question. James Mill alone, among the earlier nineteenth century economists, definitely excludes labourers' consumptive goods from capital. (Principles of Political ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... capital, their ultimate association in profits for mutual benefit. This social as well as political union, together with the specializing and differentiation of pursuits, and observing duties as rights, would falsify the gloomy dogma of Malthus, founded on the doctrine of the eternal and ever-augmenting antagonism of wages and money, and solve, in favor of humanity, the great problem of the grand and glorious destiny of the masses of mankind. The law of humanity is progress, onward and upward, and will, in time, crush ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the attack to rally the escort, and to show a front to the enemy, whereby the possibility of aiding those who had failed to make good their retreat might have been ascertained.—Signed by General MARSHALL; Colonel MALTHUS, 94th Regiment; ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... Population Essay. That was the day of population essays. Malthus's Essay on Population, 1798, had led to ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... not sufficient, and recourse was had to the purchase of slaves, which was made even in the provinces of the East subject to the Romans. It is, moreover, known that slavery is a state little favorable to population. (See Hume's Essay, and Malthus on population, i. 334.—G.) The testimony of Appian (B.C. l. i. c. 7) is decisive in favor of the rapid multiplication of the agricultural slaves; it is confirmed by the numbers engaged in the servile wars. Compare also Blair, p. 119; ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... Claverton near Bath) Graves knew many interesting persons, from Shenstone and Whitefield (with both of whom he was at Pembroke College, Oxford, though he afterwards became a fellow of All Souls) to Malthus, who was a pupil of his; and he had some interesting private experiences. He wove a good deal that was personal into his novel, which, as may easily be guessed, is a satire upon Methodism, and in which Whitefield is personally and not altogether ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... claim, even to the very books in the bookcases, which showed an antiquarian taste. Here were the strange old-fashioned satires of Thackeray and the more modern romances of the humorist Dickens; the crude speculations of the philosopher Spencer, and the one-sided, aristocratic economies of Malthus and Mill; with the feeble rhymes of Lord Tennyson d'Eyncourt, which men, in ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... illustrate not only the indestructibility of Ireland, but her all but miraculous power of recuperation. So abundant are the resources of his own vitality that, as Dr Moritz Bonn declares, an Irish peasant can live where a continental goat would starve. And not having read Malthus—Mr Malthus at that time being even less readable than since—the Irish remnant proceeded to develop anew into a nation. In forty years it was marching behind that beau chevalier Owen Roe O'Neill to battle and victory. O'Neill, a general famous through Europe, ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... yet no man in Troy could treat a woman with greater plainness of speech. The confirmed spinsters (high and low, rich and poor, we counted seventy-three of them in Troy) seemed to like him none the less because he lost no occasion, public or private, of commending wedlock. For the doctrine of Mr. Malthus (recently promoted to a Professorship at the East India College) he had a robust contempt. He openly regretted that, owing to the negligence of our forefathers, the outbreak of war found Great Britain with but fifteen million inhabitants to match against twenty-five ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... explanation of your law is the same as that which I offer. You are right, that I came to the conclusion that selection was the principle of change from the study of domesticated productions; and then, reading Malthus, I saw at once how to apply this principle. Geographical distribution and geological relations of extinct to recent inhabitants of South America first led me to the subject: especially the case of ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... Malthus I had read, and been even more deeply impressed by, Sir Charles Lyell's immortal Principles of Geology; which had taught me that the inorganic world—the whole surface of the earth, its seas and lands, its mountains and valleys, its rivers and lakes, and every detail of its climatic conditions—were ...
— The Coming of Evolution - The Story of a Great Revolution in Science • John W. (John Wesley) Judd
... also subject to the law of Malthus. It is continually living beyond its means, it increases in proportion to its means, and draws its support solely, from the substance of the people. Woe to the people who are incapable of limiting the sphere of action of the State. Liberty, private ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... said slowly, "in this question of many children or few there's a natural conflict between the private man and the citizen; yes, that's how I put it—a natural conflict. I don't believe in Malthus or any talk about over-population. A nation can't breed too many sons. Sons are her strength, and if she is to whip her rivals it will be by the big battalions. Therefore, as I argue it out, a good citizen should beget many children. But now ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... broken because the shafts had been taken out), of the good nature of the peasants that had treated him to vodka, of the dogs who lay at the feet of their respective masters, Oblonsky began telling them of a delightful shooting party at Malthus's, where he had ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... 1838, that is, fifteen months after I had begun my systematic inquiry, I happened to read for amusement Malthus's Essay on the Principle of Population, and being well prepared to appreciate the struggle for existence which everywhere goes on, from long-continued observation of the habits of animals and plants, it at once struck me that under these circumstances favorable variations ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... keeping them, and which has peopled the continent of North America and the Australian colonies with an English-speaking race" (Richardson's Corn and Cattle Producing Districts of France, p. 47, etc.). Surely this is a well-established fact. It is possible that denunciations of Malthus may occasionally be found both in Clerical and Socialistic prints, but then there are reasons for that. It can hardly be made much of a charge against French democracy that it tolerates unscientific opinion, so long as ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... that it was the geographical descendants of France who, out of the wealth of their heritage of France's bequeathing, untouched from the glaciers and the Indians, were confuting with their wheat the prophecies of Malthus and making the whole world a more comfortable and a somewhat brighter place with their iron, their oil, their reapers, their wagons, and their sewing-machines. It were nothing to be ashamed ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... the history of this intellectual development, its definite and formal opening, coincides with the opening of the nineteenth century and the publication of Malthus's Essay on Population. Malthus is one of those cardinal figures in intellectual history who state definitely for all time, things apparent enough after their formulation, but never effectively conceded before. He brought clearly and emphatically ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... is scarcely a man," wrote Malthus, a clergyman as well as one of the profoundest thinkers of his day (Essay on the Principle of Population, 1798, Ch. XI), "who has once experienced the genuine delight of virtuous love, however great his intellectual pleasures may have been, that does not look back to the period as ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... circumstances are most favourable to variation. In the next chapter the Struggle for Existence amongst all organic beings throughout the world, which inevitably follows from the high geometrical ratio of their {5} increase, will be treated of. This is the doctrine of Malthus, applied to the whole animal and vegetable kingdoms. As many more individuals of each species are born than can possibly survive; and as, consequently, there is a frequently recurring struggle for existence, it follows that any being, if it vary however slightly in any manner ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... plated dinosaurs, or Stegosauria, but especially of two entirely distinct kinds of large and small flesh-eating dinosaurs. The latter rounded out and gave variety to the dinosaur society, and there is no doubt that they served the savage but useful purpose, rendered familiar by the doctrine of Malthus, of checking overpopulation. These fierce animals had the same remote ancestry as the giant dinosaurs, but had gradually acquired entirely different habits ...
— Dinosaurs - With Special Reference to the American Museum Collections • William Diller Matthew
... like the present, when the scarcity of every kind of food is so painfully acknowledged, that shame has no effect upon him. Can he have read Mr. Malthus's Thoughts on the Ratio of Food to Population? Can he think it reasonable that one man should consume the ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... to use the term "Neo-Malthusianism" to indicate the voluntary limitation of the family, but it must always be remembered that Malthus would not have approved of Neo-Malthusianism, and that Neo-Malthusian practices have nothing to do with the theory of Malthus. They would not be affected could that theory be conclusively proved ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... heart and vessels, and because some of them, notably Cesalpinus, came within a very little of the discovery of the circulation; the achievements of Darwin are not to be belittled because Lamarck, Malthus or Monboddo had notions in accordance with the tenor of his great generalization of evolution among living beings. Certainly Jenner had precursors; but it was his genius and his genius alone which, putting together the various fragments of knowledge already possessed, ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... "The Amish pretty much invented American agriculture, you know. They've developed the finest low-energy farming there is. Clover-growing, crop-rotation, using animal manures, those are their inventions. Aaron, by his example, will teach the natives here Pennsylvania farming. Before you can say Tom Malthus, there'll be steel cities in this wilderness, filled with citizens eager to open charge accounts ...
— Blind Man's Lantern • Allen Kim Lang
... work of Malthus on Population? It is one of the ablest I have ever seen. Although his main object is to delineate the effects of redundancy of population, and to test the poor laws of England, and other palliations for that evil, several ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... all those who squander to-day the fruits of others' toil were forced to employ their leisure in useful work, our wealth would increase in proportion to the number of producers, and more. Finally, we know that contrary to the theory enunciated by Malthus—that Oracle of middle-class Economics—the productive powers of the human race increase at a much more rapid ratio than its powers of reproduction. The more thickly men are crowded on the soil, the more rapid is the growth ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... the starving with a plump existence? Is it not, economically viewed, the principle of Dr. Franklin's smoke-consuming pipe applied to the infinitely more important sphere of human existence? The festive table, to which, according to the great Malthus, Nature declines inviting a large portion of every well-peopled country, will never be known by the happy Fijian Say or Senior, so long as wise conservatism shall not change its old and sacred laws, and shall allow Nature to invite one happy portion as guests, and another happy portion as savory ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... Cobbett's Political Register for November 24, 1810, containing Hazlitt's letter upon "Mr. Malthus and the Edinburgh Reviewers," signed "The Author of a Reply to the Essay on Population." Hazlitt's reply had been criticised in the Edinburgh for August, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... of economic science? Within certain limits, it is apparently true: Ricardo used mathematical formulae, though he kept to arithmetic, instead of algebra. When Malthus spoke of arithmetical and geometrical ratios, the statement, true or false, was, of course, capable of precise numerical expression, so soon as the ratios were assigned. So there was the famous ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... another illustration Malthus's doctrine of population. This illustration is all the better for the fact that his actual doctrine is now known to be largely erroneous. It is not his conclusions that are valuable, but the temper and method of his inquiry. As everyone knows, it was to him that Darwin owed ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell
... at their self-imposed task of undermining society. Mr. M. G. Cunniff, who lately made an intimate study of trade-unionism, says: "All through the unions socialism filters. Almost every other man is a socialist, preaching that unionism is but a makeshift." "Malthus be damned," they told him, "for the good time was coming when every man should be able to rear his family in comfort." In one union, with two thousand members, Mr. Cunniff found every man a socialist, and from his experiences ...
— War of the Classes • Jack London
... thing which is hardly conceivable—it seems hardly imaginable—yet it is so. It is indeed simply the law of Malthus exemplified. Mr. Malthus was a clergyman, who worked out this subject most minutely and truthfully some years ago; he showed quite clearly,—and although he was much abused for his conclusions at the time, they have never yet been disproved and never will be—he showed that in ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... enlarged it in 1844; previous speculations on the subject; views of Erasmus Darwin, Geoffroy St. Hilaire, and Lamarck; Darwin's opinion of Lamarck; influence of Lyell; influence of South American experience; reads Malthus on Population; "Vestiges of Creation "; Mr. Herbert Spencer and evolution; Lyell's letters; Sir Joseph Hooker on species; Mr. A. R. Wallace communicates his views to Darwin; Lyell and Hooker persuade Darwin to publish his views together with those of Wallace; introductory ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany |
