On the other hand, Malthus did not realize the extent to which new countries such as the United States, Canada, Australia, Argentina would contribute to the world’s means of subsistence. He could not predict the way in which invention would be applied in solving agricultural problems, and how today one man with improved machinery and intensive methods can produce a hundred ears of corn where one was produced a century ago. Nevertheless, the “new country” argument against Malthus’ principle of population is ultimately fallacious, for new countries soon become old, the supply of new countries becomes exhausted, and there is even a limit to soil productiveness. The very pressure of population against means of subsistence is, however, a cause of inventiveness, so that unanticipated increases in food supply may occur at any time.
Socialism has criticized Malthus severely. Socialism holds that at a given time the food supply is sufficient to meet human needs but that it is poorly or unjustly distributed. With just distribution of the returns from industry, food supply would not impinge strongly on population. But socialism might greatly endanger the prudential check on population, and hence result in an increased birth rate; which in turn would more than balance any release from human misery that a just distribution of the returns from industry would effect.
Another point which Malthus did not observe is that the increase in technical skill which comes with vocational education is overcome by the tendency of the world’s population to overtake the world’s food productiveness. With increase in population, the price of land rises, the rent for land increases, the cost of living mounts upward, and the purchasing power of the dollar, or its equivalent, declines.
Some of the followers of Malthus have advocated birth control as an artificial means of regulating population. Birth control prevents by physical means the birth of children. It is a useful weapon against sexually brutal husbands. It does not provide for self control or moral control of the sexual impulses. It encourages rather than controls gratification of the sexual desires. By it a gain is made in protecting helpless women and in cutting down the birth rate among the lower moral classes, whether wealthy or poor, but the gain is more than lost by the opportunity which birth control gives to the irregular gratification of sexual impulses and by the resultant weakening of moral fibre.
Thomas N. Carver, whose work will be referred to again in subsequent chapters, has developed an interesting population theory which is partly Malthusian.[XII-13] The increase in population from both immigration sources and the birth rate should be cut down, thereby decreasing the percentage of unskilled labor. Further, persons should be trained out of the unskilled group into the skilled group and then into the entrepreneur class. Thus, by greatly decreasing the number of unskilled laborers and by increasing the number of entrepreneurs, wages will advance and profits will be increasingly subdivided. The poor will become well-to-do, and poverty as it is now known will tend to disappear. This theory underestimates the importance of psychological motives and of social attitudes under a system where a marked degree of competition is encouraged.
In conclusion, it may be stated that the principle of population as given by Malthus is fundamental to an understanding of the problems of social progress.[XII-14] There is a positive relation between population and means of subsistence. Positive and preventive checks upon population are continually at work. Moral restraint and self control, based on scientifically devised human laws, create a better moral fibre than birth control. The quality of personality is far more important than mere numbers of population. The struggle for quality in personality must be supplemented by justice in industrial and social processes before the population problem can be solved.
Chapter XIII
Comte and Positive Social Thought
An organized foundation for the field of social thought was not laid until near the close of the first half of the nineteenth century. At that time Auguste Comte (1798–1857) gave at least an organized groundwork, if not a synthetic introduction to sociology. He was the first to stake out the territory of social thought, to show the relation of social thought to other fields of knowledge, and to separate social statics from social dynamics. He was the first important social philosopher, and his Positive Philosophy the first treatise roughly to outline the field of sociology.
Auguste Comte invented the term, sociology, by which he meant the science of human association. While he did not contribute much to the science itself, he laid important foundation stones. He reacted against all forms of loose thinking about man, rejected metaphysical and theological speculations, and insisted upon the observation and classification of social phenomena. He repudiated attempts to discover causes of social uniformities, and coined the name, positivism, for the philosophical system upon which he founded sociology. The bases of positivism may be found in the ideas of Bacon, Galileo, and Descartes. As each of these three men broke with tradition and sought observed facts in their respective fields, so Comte was likewise prompted to do in the field of social thought.
Auguste Comte was born at Montpelier, France, the son of humble and law-abiding Catholic parents. At the age of nine he displayed unusual mental ability, a strong character, and a tendency to defy authority. He is described as brilliant and recalcitrant. He possessed a wonderful memory and a remarkable avidity for reading. In school he won many prizes, and took a position of leadership among his fellow students, who called him “the philosopher.” At the age of sixteen he was devoting his energies and abilities to the study of mathematics.