ety could be modified by the conscious efforts of man
only within restricted limits. [Footnote: The recent conclusions of Mr.
Knibbs, statistician to the Commonwealth of Australia, in vol. i. of
his Appendix to the Census of the Commonwealth, have an interest in this
connection. I quote from an article in the Times of August 5, 1918: "An
eminent geographer, the late Mr. E. G. Ravenstein, some years ago, when
the population of the earth was estimated at 1400 million, foretold that
about the middle of this century population would have reached a
limit beyond which increase would be disastrous. Mr. Knibbs is not so
pessimistic and is much more precise; though he defers the disastrous
culmination, he has no doubt as to its inevitability. The limits of
human expansion, he assures us, are much nearer than popular opinion
imagines; the difficulty of food supplies will soon be most grave; the
exhaustion of sources of energy necessary for any notable increase of
population, or advance in the standards of living, or both combined, is
perilously near. The present rate of increase in the world's population
cannot continue for four centuries."]

6.

The Essay of Malthus afterwards became one of the sacred books of the
Utilitarian sect, and it is interesting to notice what Bentham himself
thought of perfectibility. Referring to the optimistic views of
Chastellux and Priestley on progressive amelioration he observed that
"these glorious expectations remind us of the golden age of poetry."
For perfect happiness "belongs to the imaginary region of philosophy and
must be classed with the universal elixir and the philosopher's stone."
There will always be jealousies through the unequal gifts of nature and
of fortune; interests will never cease to clash and hatred to ensue;
"painful labour, daily subjection, a condition nearly allied to
indigence, will always be the lot of numbers"; in art and poetry the
sources of novelty will probably be exhausted. But Bentham was far from
being a pessimist. Though he believes that "we shall never make this
world the abode of happiness," he asserts that it may be made a most
delightful garden "compared with the savage forest in which men so long
have wandered." [Footnote: Works, vol. i. p. 193 seq.]

7.

The book of Malthus was welcomed at the moment by all those who had been
thoroughly frightened by the French Revolution and saw in the "modern
philosophy," as it was called, a serious danger to socie