Mr. Malthus lays down as the basis of all his reasonings the two following positions, viz. ‘First, that food is necessary to the existence of man.’
‘Secondly, That the passion between the sexes is necessary, and will remain nearly in its present state.’
‘These two laws,’ he adds, ‘ever since we have had any knowledge of mankind, appear to have been fixed laws of our nature; and as we have not hitherto seen any alteration in them, we have no right to conclude that they will ever cease to be what they are now, without an immediate act of power in that Being who first arranged the system of the universe. The best arguments for the perfectibility of man are drawn from a contemplation of the great progress that he has already made from the savage state, and the difficulty of saying where he is to stop. But towards the extinction of the passion between the sexes, no progress whatever has hitherto been made. It appears to exist in as much force at present as it did two thousand, or four thousand years ago. There are individual exceptions now as there always have been. But, as these exceptions do not appear to increase in number, it would surely be a very unphilosophical mode of arguing to infer merely from the existence of an exception, that the exception would in time become the rule, and the rule the exception.’