Again,
the old cannot subsist at all without the support of the young, nor
lead a cheerful existence without their company. Imagine a world with
no youth in it, a winter without a spring!
3. There is this difference between self-preservation and the
preservation of the race, that if a man will not eat, none can eat for
him; but if one man omit the propagation of his kind, another can take
it up. There are many things necessary for the good of mankind, which
are not to be done by every individual. Not all are to be soldiers,
nor all builders, though houses are needful, and sometimes war. Nor is
it desirable that the human race should be multiplied to its utmost
capacity. It is enough here to mention without discussing the teaching
of Malthus, how population presses on the means of subsistence, the
latter increasing in an arithmetical, the former in a geometrical
ratio. Without going the whole way with Malthus, modern economical
writers are commonly a little Malthusian, and shrink from giving to
all and each of their species the word to "increase and multiply."
4. But, it will be said, sickly and consumptive subjects, and still
more those who have any tendency to madness, may well be excused from
having children; so too may they be excused whose poverty cannot keep
a family; excused too is the inveterate drunkard, and all habitual
criminals, by the principle of heredity, lest they transmit to
posterity an evil bodily predisposition; but the healthy and the
virtuous, men sound of mind and limb, of life unspotted, and in
circumstances easy, the flower of the race,--none of these surely
should omit to raise up others to wear his lineaments: we want such
men multiplied.
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