Page:An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798).djvu/390

 man, according to our crude fancies, of what he might be) we may pronounce, with certainty, that the world would not have been peopled, but for the superiority of the power of population to the means of subsistence. Strong, and constantly operative as this stimulus is on man, to urge him to the cultivation of the earth; if we still see that cultivation proceeds very slowly, we may fairly conclude, that a less stimulus would have been insufficient. Even under the operation of this constant excitement, savages will inhabit countries of the greatest natural fertility, for a long period, before they betake themselves to pasturage or agriculture. Had population and food increased in the same ratio, it is probable that man might never have emerged from the savage state. But supposing the earth once well peopled, an Alexander, a Julius Caesar, a Tamerlane, or a bloody revolution, might irrecoverably thin the