An Essay on the Principle of
Population.
"It has been said that the great question is now at
issue, whether man shall henceforth start forwards with
accelerated velocity towards illimitable, and hitherto
unconceived improvement, or be condemned to a perpetual
oscillation between happiness and misery . . . "1a
" . . . [T]he vices and moral weakness of mankind,
taken in the mass, are invincible."1b
" . . . [W]hen . . . we turn our eyes to the book of
nature, where alone we can read God as he is, we
see a constant succession of sentient beings, rising apparently
from so many specks of matter, going through a long and
sometimes painful process in this world, but many of them
attaining . . . such high qualities and powers as seem to indicate
their fitness for some superior state."1c
DARWIN
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1 Thomas Malthus
(1766-1834). An Essay on the Principle of
Population and A Summary View of the Principle of Population.
Edited with an Introduction by Antony Flew. Antony Flew, 1970.
London, UK: Penguin Books Ltd., 1985.
a Chapter I, at 67.
b Chapter XIV, at 170.
c Chapter XVIII, at 201.
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