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Updated: May 4, 2025
I will never beget children to swell the numbers of those who are trampling each other down in the struggle for daily bread, to minister in ever deepening poverty and misery to the rich man's luxury perhaps his lust." "Then you believe in the Malthusian doctrines?"
Then follows "Struggle for Existence," a principle which we experimentally know to be true and cogent, bringing the comfortable assurance, that man, even upon Leviathan Hobbes's theory of society, is no worse than the rest of creation, since all Nature is at war, one species with another, and the nearer kindred the more internecine, bringing in thousand-fold confirmation and extension of the Malthusian doctrine, that population tends far to outrun means of subsistence throughout the animal and vegetable world, and has to be kept down by sharp preventive checks; so that not more than one of a hundred or a thousand of the individuals whose existence is so wonderfully and so sedulously provided for ever comes to anything, under ordinary circumstances; so the lucky and the strong must prevail, and the weaker and ill-favored must perish; and then follows, as naturally as one sheep follows another, the chapter on "Natural Selection," Darwin's cheval de bataille, which is very much the Napoleonic doctrine, that Providence favors the strongest battalions, that, since many more individuals are born than can possibly survive, those individuals and those variations which possess any advantage, however slight, over the rest, are in the long run sure to survive, to propagate, and to occupy the limited field, to the exclusion or destruction of the weaker brethren.
Besant before alluded to, two and often three lectures every Sunday, to say nothing of the editorial work on the National Reformer, the secretarial work on the Malthusian League, and stray lectures during the week, my time was fairly well filled.
Then follows "Struggle for Existence" a principle which we experimentally know to be true and cogent bringing the comfortable assurance, that man, even upon Leviathan Hobbes's theory of society, is no worse than the rest of creation, since all Nature is at war, one species with another, and the nearer kindred the more internecine bringing in thousandfold confirmation and extension of the Malthusian doctrine that population tends far to outrun means of subsistence throughout the animal and vegetable world, and has to be kept down by sharp preventive checks; so that not more than one of a hundred or a thousand of the individuals whose existence is so wonderfully and so sedulously provided for ever comes to anything, under ordinary circumstances; so the lucky and the strong must prevail, and the weaker and ill-favored must perish; and then follows, as naturally as one sheep follows another, the chapter on "Natural Selection," Darwin's cheval de bataille, which is very much the Napoleonic doctrine that Providence favors the strongest battalions that, since many more individuals are born than can possibly survive, those individuals and those variations which possess any advantage, however slight, over the rest, are in the long-run sure to survive, to propagate, and to occupy the limited field, to the exclusion or destruction of the weaker brethren.
Wherever we went, separately or together, it was the same story, and not only were Malthusian lectures eagerly attended, and Malthusian literature eagerly bought, but curiosity brought many to listen to our Radical and Freethought lectures, and thousands heard for the first time what Secularism really meant.
Memory, imagination, zeal, perceptions of men and things, equally with rank and riches, have often cost their full price, as many mad have known; they take too much out of a man fret, wear, worry him; to be irritable, is the conditional tax laid of old upon an author's intellect; the crowd of internal imagery makes him hasty, quick, nervous as a haunted hunted man: minds of coarser web heed not how small a thorn rends one of so delicate a texture; they cannot estimate the wish that a duller sword were in a tougher scabbard; the river, not content with channel and restraining banks, overflows perpetually; the extortionate exacting armies of the Ideal and the Causal persecute MY spirit, and I would make a patriot stand at once to vanquish the invaders of my peace: I write these things only to be quit of them, and not to let the crowd increase; I have conceived a plan to destroy them all, as Jehu and Elijah with the priests of Baal; I feel Malthusian among my mental nurselings; a dire resolve has filled me to effect a premature destruction of the literary populace superfoetating in my brain plays, novels, essays, tales, homilies, and rhythmicals; for ethics and poetics, politics and rhetorics, will I display no more mercy than sundry commentators of maltreated Aristotle: I will exhibit them in their state chaotic; I will addle the eggs, and the chicken shall not chirp; I will reveal, and secrets shall not waste me; I will write, and thoughts shall not batten on me.
Darwin comes in for a share of blame chiefly because he transferred the Malthusian theory of population from political economy to natural science, because he is entangled by his notions of breeding, so that his work is a sort of unscientific half-poetic attack against design in creation, and that the whole of Darwinism, after what he has borrowed from Lamark has been deducted, is a piece of brutality aimed against humanity.
Writers of this class naturally accept the Malthusian doctrine of population, and ascribe misery and want to purely natural causes, viz., the pressure of population on the means of subsistence.
Drysdale, Sen., and his family and supporters, through the Malthusian League, whose present address is 124, Victoria Street, London, S.W.1., and these pioneers have made a most self-sacrificing effort for the benefit of poor women by establishing a welfare centre at 153a, East Street, Walworth, London, S.E.17, where free advice is given in birth-control and sexual hygiene, and where medical supplies are available at nominal prices.
This was to happen in a world where the Malthusian theory of population is a dominant reality, where millions are fighting every day for the bread of life, and thousands are dying from the lack of proper food, raiment and shelter. One of their number whose name will not appear in history, published a book, entitled "True Civilization an Immediate Necessity."
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