Bonar says (Malthus and his Work, p. 53), "Moral restraint in the pages
of Malthus, simply means continence which is abstinence from marriage
followed by no irregularities."
These checks have their origin in a need for, and scarcity of
food,--food comprising all those conditions necessary to healthy life.
The need of food is vital and permanent. The desire for food, immediate
and prospective, is the first motive of all animal activity, but the
amount of food available in the world is limited, and the possible
increase of food is estimated by Malthus at an arithmetical ratio.
Whether or not this is an accurate estimate of the ratio of food
increase is immaterial. Malthus's famous progressions, the geometrical
ratio of increase in the case of animals, and the arithmetical ratio of
increase in the case of food, contain the vital and irrefutable truth of
the immense disproportion between the power of reproduction in man and
the power of production in food.
Under the normal conditions of life, the population tends constantly to
press upon, and is restrained by the limits of food. The true
significance of the word _tends_ must not be overlooked, or a similar
fallacy to that of Nitti's will occur, when he overlooked the
significance of the term "power to multiply.
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