A theory of population, deduced from the general law of animal fertility / [Herbert Spencer?].

  • Spencer, Herbert, 1820-1903.
Date:
1852
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A theory of population, deduced from the general law of animal fertility / [Herbert Spencer?]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    will not be greater than needful; and that a sufficient supply of good food to all, is the chief condition to the attainment of such a state. Now, without denying that there is some such law of varia¬ tion as this which Mr. Doubleday points out, we hold that it cannot alone constitute the law of population, because, as already hinted, it does not really disclose a self-rectifying arrangement. We shall quickly see this on applying it to the human race as now existing. Mr. Doubleday will admit, or rather, will assert, that on the average mankind are at present in the deplethoric state; he will argue that the undue rate of increase commonly complained of results from this; and he will infer that to produce a comparatively plethoric state in all is the only remedy. But how, under the alleged law, can a com¬ paratively plethoric state ever be attained to ? If the present production of necessaries of life is insufficient for the normal nutrition of the race, and if the resulting deplethoric state involves that the next generation will greatly exceed the present in numbers, then, for anything that appears to the contrary, the next generation will be in a more deplethoric state still. Unless Mr. Doubleday can show that the means of subsistence will increase more rapidly than the unduly fertile people, he cannot prove the existence of any remedial process. Nay, indeed, he must show that his law involves, under such circumstances, a greater increase of food than of people. Now he neither does nor can show this; and thus the alleged law lacks that very property of self-adjustment, which he rightly regards as the test of the real law. Mr. Doubleday has given us, not the whole truth, but only a small fraction of it. He might, a priori, have inferred this, had he taken a wider view of the phenomena. For just the same necessity that demands variations in the fertility of each race to balance variations in its mortality, still more imperatively demands variations in the fertilities of different races to balance variations in their mortalities; and whoever has duly familiarised himself with the simplicity and universality of natural agencies, can scarcely doubt that these minor variations of fertility observable in the same species, and these great variations of fertility which distinguish different species, are determined by the same cause. Had Mr. Doubleday recognised this probability, he would have seen that no such special cause as that he assigns, was likely to be the true one; but that some more general cause must be looked for: and he would further have seen, that such more general cause was not to be discovered without inquiring more deeply into organic phenomena than he has done.