Essay on the Principle of Population

I have 2 postulates:

1. Food is necessary to the existence of man

2. The passion between the sexes is necessary and will remain nearly in its present state.

These two laws have been fixed laws of our nature.

I do not know that any writer has supposed that on this earth man will ultimately be able to live without food.

Mr Godwin has conjectured that the passion between the sexes may in time be extinguished.

But the passion between the sexes has stayed the same as it was 4,000 years ago.

Assuming my postulata as granted, then the power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man.

Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio.

Subsistence increases only in an arithmetical ratio.

The effects of these two unequal powers must be kept equal.*