Spencer Heath Archive

Item 3018

Pencil annotations by Heath in E. Parmalee Prentice, Hunger and History. Caldwell, Idaho, The Caxton Printers, 1951.

No date

 

 

 

Pages 222-224:

 

[Quoting Prof. Humphrey Michell, “A Restatement of the Malthusian Doctrine,” The Contemporary Review, November 1924, pp 628-637:

“Secondly, if the new methods [of agricultural production] did permit a greater population, then the Chinese would, in a very short space of time, breed up to the new possibilities of subsistence.” (Emphasis by SH)]

 

No! When lives lengthen (as they would) births decline. An inverse law — for interfunctioning free men.

[“From whatever way we look at it, we must see that China, and a large part of India and Japan, have reached the ultimate stage beyond which it is prac­tically impossible to go.”]

Until they have achieved free enterprise.

[Prentice: “It must always be borne in mind that the natural tendency of [here SH inserts “precarious”] life is to reproduce regardless of consequences, and that if America and Europe are to escape the fate of Asia it can only be by an appeal to the distinctive superiority of which Malthus spoke, in man^’s reasoning faculties which enable him to calculate remote consequences.” (Emphasis by SH)]

Rather, his intuitions toward the rationality that is inherent in his trading (contractual) relationships.

— His largely unconscious rationality.

 

[Unfortunately, however, the decline in the birth rate is not equally spread through all classes of the people but is greatest among those who have the best education and the widest cultural resources. Apparently, low incomes and unemployment produce a high birth rate, while higher incomes and steady employment produce a lower birth rate.”* (Emphasis by SH)]

But not less numbers — because of their longer lives.

Who lives like flies, but breeds and dies.  S.H.

 

*Those who live the best and thereby longest, most productive and least re-productive lives.

 

Life extension maintains numbers far better than does frequent replacement.

 

Fecundity is nature’s response to insecurity.

 

Malthus was not vicious, only ignorant.

 

 

Page 226:

 

[Prentice: “The great change began, as has been said, with an increase in the supply of food. There was a hope that famine could be abolished, but the first thought of every observer, naturally, was of skepticism.” (Emphasis by SH)]

 

 

Like abolishment of taxation.

 

[“So large a part of human misery comes from human improvidence that, without a change in man^’s nature*   it was impossible to believe that great reduction in   the amount of human want could be made.” (Emphasis by  SH)]

 

 

Change in man^’s habits. From iron rule to Golden Rule, coercion to contract, destruction to creation, politics to business, government to society.

 

Page 233:

[Quoting William Hazlitt, in his “Notes of a Journey through France and Italy,” Works, Vol. 9, page 257:

“The Americans will perhaps lose their freedom, when they begin fully to reap all the fruits of it; for the energy necessary to acquire freedom, and the ease that follows the enjoyment of it, are almost incompatible.” (Emphasis by  SH)]

 

 

Unless there is rational understanding of it.

As in Citadel, Market and Altar.