Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/772

748 ever enjoyed commerce free from restrictions before, there is a full and complete justification of the axiom of Frédéric Bastiat: "In proportion to the increase of capital, the absolute share (of a given product) falling to capital is augmented, but the relative share is diminished; on the other hand, the share falling to labor is increased both absolutely and relatively." We witness decade by decade increased production, lessened prices, higher wages, lessened cost of labor.

In addressing this association I may therefore venture to deal with deeper principles than those which govern the mere compilation of statistics.

It is but a year over a century since Malthus published his treatise upon population, in which he formulated what he believed to be a rule—namely, a tendency of population to increase in a geometrical ratio, while, as he believed, the means of subsistence could only increase in an arithmetical ratio. On this alleged tendency of population to Outgrow the means of subsistence he based a rule which has since been called a survival of the fittest. He regarded the destructive influences of war, pestilence, and famine as necessary elements in limiting population to the possibility of subsistence. This theory of Malthus later became joined to a theory of a lessened production of food on given areas of land in ratio to the work done upon it, which I believe originated with Ricardo. These two pessimistic conceptions rightly brought upon political economy the name of the dismal science. Subsequently, and in recent years, both Darwin and Wallace have stated that they derived the theory of a natural selection or a survival of the fittest from the treatise of Malthus, which gave to each of them a direction in their study of natural forces which led in the end to their great work in establishing the principle of evolution. It would be presumptuous on the part of any member of one of the unlearned professions to pass judgment upon this theory in its application to animal life viewed wholly on the physical side. Yet, while we must admit that the experience of a century does not suffice either to prove or to disprove any such far-reaching proposition as that of Malthus, we may rightly ask if it is not true that if there were a tendency of population to outgrow the means of subsistence, that tendency could not fail to have disclosed itself even within the short period of a hundred years. The fact that there has been no such tendency has an important bearing on the right definition of survival of the fittest.

All hypotheses must in the end be tested by the logic of facts and by the common sense of the community regarded as a whole. 'So theory survives which is not true and complete in all its bearings. Whether or not the theory of evolution as it is now stated is