Secondly, that the passion between the sexes is necessary, and will remain nearly in its present state. -Ch1

No one's bought it up yet, so I will.

Does the possibility of contraception and fertility education answer Malthus's basic problem? For him:

sexual attraction ----> babies

This is increasingly not the case; the sociological trends have changed drastically.

On the other hand, if the suffering of poverty is necessary for moral virtue, then we might prevent against extreme poverty, but will cease to be truly happy people. Perhaps this is the Catholic Church's stance--to encourage population growth so that people can be destitute and happy, or so that some people can be destitute and others generous and happy.

"Through the animal and vegetable kingdoms, nature has scattered the seeds of life abroad with the most profuse and liberal hand. She has been comparatively sparing in the room and the nourishment necessary to rear them. The germs of existence contained in this spot of earth, with ample food and ample room to expand in, would fill millions of worlds in the course of a dew thousand years. Necessity, that imperious all pervading law of nature, restrains them within the prescribed bounds. The race of plants and the race of animals shrink under this great restrictive law. And the race of man cannot by any efforts of reason, escape from it. Among plants and animals, its effects are waste of seed, sickness, and premature death. Among mankind, misery and vice. The former, misery, is an absolutely necessary consequence of it. Vice is a highly probable consequence, and we therefore see it abundantly prevail, but it ought not, perhaps, to be called an absolutely necessary consequence. The ordeal of virtue is to resist all temptation to evil." (p20)

After reading this passage, I couldn't help but be moved by Malthus's writing. His style and language are simple beautiful, and I must point out that this passage, along with many others, are simply amazing not only on paper, but also in theory. The thought of life and nature being bound by some something is simply the natural way of life. Malthus is showing that no life on this planet can get too big, and in fact we are all regulated by the laws of nature, which are unbreakable. But, to me what is most important about this passage is his use of the word "vice". For someone who is a bit ignorant towards Malthus' use of the word, it might be helpful to dig deeper into his meaning. Malthus uses this concept throughout a lot of his work, but if vice is a consequence of regulation, shouldn't it help that we know exactly what it is?

Limits

"It may be said with truth that man is always susceptible of improvement, or that there never has been, or will be, a period of his history in which he can be said to have reached his possible acme of perfection. Yet it does not by any means follow from this, that our efforts to improve man will always succeed, or even that he will ever make, in the greatest number of ages, any extraordinary strides towards perfection. The only inference that can be drawn is that the precise limit of his improvement cannot possibly be known." (p. 90, chpt. XIV)

When I first read this, I found it incredibly easy to agree with Malthus. But then I re-read the selection, and I started to think that maybe my quick consent was wrong. When I first agreed, I thought the best part was when he said "or even that he will ever make, ... any extraordinary strides towards perfection." It then struck me, however, that perhaps we are stuck, and that we really won't get any nearer perfection than we are at now. Wouldn't that mean that we are in fact at the limit of improvement? Not to say that we are already perfect, but that we are as good as we are going to get, and any perceived improvements are simply variations in how we live imperfectly? It seemed strange to me that Malthus didn't address this possibility in his "desperately grim picture of the human condition," as Patt-man so accurately put it. Are we stuck in the mud, so to speak? And why didn't Malthus indulge this possibility?

Real quick: first, I'm really sorry about all the blog failures in recent days. I'll do better. Second, I just wanted to make sure we caught this:

The same number of cattle, or even the same weight of cattle at the different periods when killed, will have consumed (if I may be allowed the expression) very different quantities of human subsistence.

-- ch. XVI

...becomes, in modern English:

The same number of cattle, or even the same weight of cattle at the different periods when killed, will have consumed (pun definitely intended) very different quantities of human subsistence.

-- ch. XVI

Okay, that is all.

Heart of the Matter

"Want was the goad that drove the Scythian shepherds from their native haunts" (p28, Ch III).

"Some of the noblest exertions of the human mind have been set in motion by the necessity of satisfying the wants of the body" (114, Ch XVIII).

"When the mind has been awakened into activity by the passions and the wants of the body, intellectual wants arise; and the desire of knowledge and the impatience under ignorance form a new and important class of excitements" (119, Ch XVIII).

For the first 17 chapters (excluding ones we did not read), Malthus paints a desperately grim picture of the human condition - especially for the less fortunate classes - in terms of health and living necessities/conveniencies (two "universally acknowledged ingredients" of human happiness (p99, Ch XVI)), the necessities including food and "passion between the sexes" (19, I). He hammers home the gravity of humanity's dilemma, ending Ch 17 with the powerful line, "We shall not only exhaust our strength in fruitless exertions and remain at as great a distance as ever from the summit of our wishes, but we shall be perpetually crushed by the recoil of this rock of Sisyphus" (111, XVII).

However, Malthus does not end the book there. He adds two chapters to develop his theory that the earth is a state of trial by which our minds are developed to their highest ends. He describes how bodily wants develop from stimuli and spur development of the mind and its wants, which in turn develop from the infinite variety of earthly stimuli. He gradually shows how Metaphysics also "add to that class of excitements which arise from the thirst of knowledge" (120, XIX). He even approves of theology (a shocking feat in seminar four!), as long as it does not eliminate the Mystery or instantly satisfy all of the desire to know. He goes on to remark that it would seem "consonant to our reason" that minds highly developed by the trials of this world would be given immortality in the next; but even without heaven, "Life is [in light of the bigger worldview presented in the last two chapters] a blessing independent of a future state" (123, XIX).

What I find most impressive is that Malthus did not stay wallowing in the dismal picture that he portrayed as strict fact. He was impelled to move beyond the limited view of the principles of population (which are, doubtless, important!) to find something else with which he could be happy. This movement took him through physics, metaphysics, and theology to an afterlife or at least a better view of life here ("symmetry, grace, and fair proportion of the whole" (120, XIX)). What was it that impelled him to go beyond the abysmal principles of population? What was it about his heart that made him able to say "Hope springs eternal in the human breast" (124, XIX)? What did his own wants promise him, and why was this promise credible enough for him?

Problem with evils

"The principle according to which population increases prevents the vices of mankind or the accidents of nature, the partial evils arising from general laws, from obstructing the high purpose of the creation." p. 116, XVIII

"The idea that the impressions and excitements of this world are the instruments in which the Supreme Being forms matter into mind, and that the necessity of constant exertion to avoid evil and to pursue good is the principal spring of these impressions and excitements, seems to smooth many of the difficulties that occur in a contemplation of human life, and appears to me to give a satisfactory reason for the existence of natural and moral evil, and, consequently, for that part of both, and it certainly is not a very small part, which arises from the principle of population." p.124, last paragraph of XIX

Reading this text I picked out three major themes:

improvement/perfectibility of society

role of the principle of population increase in the improvement of society

evils from the general laws of nature/evils that arise from the principle of population and the place of these evils in the divine plan of the Supreme Being and in the improvement of society

The passages I quoted above seem to draw links between all three of these themes.  Can we unpack the above statements (and perhaps use other ones as well) to delineate the links between the three themes?  In the first quote Malthus says how the principle of population checks the vices of men and of nature from obstructing God's divine plan, and in the second quote he writes that natural and moral evil arise from the principle of population but are justified in light of what exactly?  I'm having trouble seeing how these two quotes are not contradictory.