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consciously sets himself to write serious history after 
the fashion of the ditty of Guy Fawkes :— 
“ I’ll sing you a doleful tragedy, Guy Fawkes the prince of 
sinisters, 
Who once blew up the House of Lords, the King, and all 
his ministers ; 
That is, he would have blown ’em up, and they’d have all 
been cindered, 
Or seriously scorched at least—if he had not been 
hindered.” 
It is obvious, then, that the output of life has been 
unduly appreciated and overvalued. This treatment is 
derived from Malthus, who, in his Essay on Population, 
laid down the proposition that the human race tended 
to increase in a geometrical ratio, while the vegetable 
world only increased in an arithmetical ratio. In adopt 
ing this doctrine as the basis of the theory of Natural 
Selection, Mr. Darwin and his followers seem to have 
enlarged the teaching of Malthus by extending the 
increase in a geometrical ratio to the vegetable world ; 
while at the same time they seem to have lost sight of the 
fact, that the greater portion of the essay of Malthus 
is taken up with discussing the checks to this enormous 
increase of population in the case of man. 
The tendency to increase in a geometrical ratio is 
always a potential attribute of every species: but the 
realisation of that tendency depends upon the conditions 
in which it is placed. In some cases there is an enor 
mous increase, if not literally an increase in a geometrical 
ratio ; in some cases there is a fixed population from year 
to year ; in some cases a species maintains its existence 
with the greatest difficulty, so that its numbers decrease 
in each generation. We have now to consider what is 
the relation between this actual output of life and that