ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the historical details, and particular examples showing the checks to population in uncivilized and in civilized places, in present and in past times. The political economy and minor writings of Malthus is noticed only in relation to the essay on population. Thomas Robert Malthus pointed out that there is strictly speaking no question here of the comparison of two tendencies, for we cannot speak of a tendency to increase food in the same sense as a tendency to increase population. Population is increased by itself; food is increased not by food itself, but by an agency external to it, the human beings that want it; and, while the former increase is due to an instinct, the latter is acquired. Eating is instinctive, but not the getting of the food. The actual rapidity of the increase of population seems to be in direct proportion to the easy possession of food.
