Page 40 - The Social Weapon: Darwinism
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s we already made clear, Darwin's views in The Origin
of Species were most influenced by the British econo-
mist and demographer Thomas Robert Malthus.
In Essay on the Principle of Population, as it Affects the Future,
first published in 1798, Malthus claimed that the human popula-
tion was increasing every twenty-five years in a geometrical ratio
(1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256…), while the food supply was increas-
ing in an arithmetical ratio (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9...); that as the pop-
ulation doubled, food resources showed a much more modest rise.
Malthus claimed that within 300 years, the ratio of population to
food resources would be 4,096 to 13. Again according to this unsci-
