The Big Picture
Malthus attempts consistently to outline his theories within the construct of the big picture. This means a timeline of generations as well as taking into account not trivial details, but events in the course of human history which are significant enough to fully change the course of history if only a relatively short period such as decades. Malthus sets the stage for this awareness of the big picture perspective early by pointing to what was at the time one of the contemporary events with the power to enact great transformation of the type to which he refers:
“the French Revolution, which, like a blazing comet, seems destined either to inspire with fresh life and vigour, or to scorch up and destroy the shrinking inhabitants of the earth”
The Best Case Scenario
In outlining his fundamental theory regarding the ratio of food production to the increase in population and the potential for that production to be enough to feed everyone or not, Malthus presents his metaphorical island. And under the best case scenario, the island becomes simile:
“In the next twenty-five years, it is impossible to suppose that the produce could be quadrupled. It would be contrary to all our knowledge of the qualities of land. The very utmost that we can conceive, is, that the increase in the second twenty-five years might equal the present produce. Let us then take this for our rule, though certainly far beyond the truth, and allow that, by great exertion, the whole produce of the Island might be increased every twenty-five years, by a quantity of subsistence equal to what it at present produces. The most enthusiastic speculator cannot suppose a greater increase than this. In a few centuries it would make every acre of land in the Island like a garden.”
The Ayn Rand of His Age
Malthus belongs firmly to that group of philosophers who cast aside any potential for an act of charity to ultimately be anything other than an act of selfishness. The only element of Malthus’ worldview that differs from the 20th century goddess of selfishness as a virtue is that Malthus at least desires this were not the case. Desire is not enough, however, to stem the inevitability of disaster that comes with actually believing that humans are capable of acting out of anything but self-interest:
“The substitution of benevolence as the master-spring and moving principle of society, instead of self-love, is a consummation devoutly to be wished.”
Sexual Quaintness
Perhaps surprisingly, the politically conservative Malthus finds himself in unusual agreement with the very liberal William Godwin (mother of Mary Shelley) that even if marriage were abolished as a convention of social life, most people would still cling to a predominantly monogamous lifestyle. He frame the reason for this belief in a metaphor that reveals two paradoxical things about Malthus: that his belief that mankind is not basically decent is not entirely true and, more tellingly, that this split in the basic decency of humans centers upon the notion of sexual deviancy:
“The love of variety is a vicious, corrupt, and unnatural taste and could not prevail in any great degree in a simple and virtuous state of society.”
“There are many substances in nature of the same size that would support as large a head as a cabbage.”
The simile that forms the centerpiece of this sentence is actually of great significance to the entire theoretical construct that Malthus is making. If the rate of population growth exceeds the ability to raise sufficient crops to feed everybody, what would be the only logical alternative? If there is a finite limit to the amount of crops which can be grown, why not instead work on trying to increase the size of individual crop? The metaphorical head of cabbage is here used to examine the accepted limitations upon how much larger a crop be successfully engineered to grow before the laws of physics also imposed a limit to that capacity.
