This outline relates to the Seventh Essay on Population.Once more I'm sorry that the indentations are busted
I-Book 1
1-Statement of the subject. Ratios of the increase of population and food
Identification of the principal cause that has impeded the progress of mankind towards happiness:
Tendency of life to increase beyond the nourishment prepared for it.
Observation by Franklin regarding proliferation
It fills vacants
Crowding
Mutual interference
[“ Every species of animals naturally multiplies in proportion to that means of their subsistence, and no species can ever multiply beyond it.” Adam Smith; Wealth; bk I ch VIII]
Nature is powerful in proliferation
Yet sparing in nourishment to provide for
Man has the additional factor of reason
Still, if unchecked would be limited in the acquisition of food
This results in misery, by many
- Of the general checks to population, and their mode of operation
Examination of unfettered growth
The available land is eventually used up: "Man is necessarily confined in room"
England
The world
New colonies have the advantage of untapped resources
After all the available land is occupied, then comes its amelioration
This is a fund, constantly diminishing
The geometric versus arithmetic growths
Those who fall into the difference and up unprovided for (scarcity)
Immediate checks, by their nature, activate before actual famine
These are:
Preventive
Reasoning enables man to foresee (calculate) distant consequences
"Calculate… If he may be able to support the offspring which he will probably bring into the world"
Vice which results in general corruption of morals and unhappiness (7)
The preventive check is least evil of the population principle if it doesn't leads to vice (8)
Positive
Stems from vice or misery
Unwholesome occupations, severe labor and exposure to the seasons, extreme poverty, but nursing of children, and large towns, excesses off all kinds, common diseases & epidemics, wars, plague [and famine]
These checks are resolved into moral restraint, vice & misery
