The climax of civilisation / by Correa Moylan Walsh.

  • Correa Moylan Walsh
Date:
1917
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The climax of civilisation / by Correa Moylan Walsh. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    increase of population than of the means of subsistence. But this was a statement of the general course of things through- out the ages. Malthus himself recognised that on exceptional occasions the means of subsistence might take a sudden leap and widen the room for more population.’® He held, however, that by its natural expansive power the population would quickly fill up the new room and again press upon its bounds. This has taken place, and the pressure is tightening. Malthus himself, in his predictions, made some mistakes of detail. Thus he conceded that England “ might in the course of some centuries contain two or three times”’ the population it had when he wrote, “‘ and yet every man in the kingdom be much better fed and clothed than he”’ then was.1! The fact is, in one century, every man being much better fed and clothed, the population of England has quadrupled. And in the world at large the population has doubled; for in Malthus’s day Malte Brun estimated it at eight hundred million, and now our statisticians reckon it at sixteen hundred million. Such an actual increase has never occurred before, and even such a rate of increase has probably not been seen since the early time when population was scanty and the room for it broad. This is not inconsistent with the complaint above made about the falling-off in the birth-rate. That falling-off began only recently, and it has taken place only in the upper and middle classes of the most advanced nations. It is properly upper- class suicide. If it has extended further, it is at most race- suicide in a few nations only on the globe. But it may amount to civilisation-suicide. There is no world-suicide, and prob- ably never will be. Other peoples are pullulating as fast as ever. While the Romans were letting themselves die out, the Germans (‘‘ germinating,” as the late Latins said?*) were swarming over the borders. Already all the public lands of the United States have been appropriated : our whole territory is occupied. South America, South Africa, and Australia are not yet fully covered. Even our own country is not yet crowded. Spaces still remain for the over-stocked parts of the world to overflow into. But 10 Cf. pp. 252, 293, 334, 340-2, 474. 11 P, 408, repeated 480. A 13 F.g., Paulus Diaconus, De Gestis Lawgobardorum, I, 1.