THE FIRST chapter of Malthus’s work on the “Principle of Population” is perhaps the most celebrated essay ever written on an economic topic. In it he defines his famous theory of “The Ratios of the Increase of Population and Food,”—a theory which is severely logical from its premises,—which omits, however, the most important of all premises in dealing with human affairs,—the fact that the human intellect operates at its best, under its highest tension, when subjected to its supremest necessities, and that the possibilities of its efficient activities are indefinable, if not absolutely limitless. While no one has found a vitiating flaw in the Malthusian ratios, considered merely as a piece of logic, the activity of the creative intellect has been such in the century since he published his “Essay on Population,” that though the increase of population throughout the civilized world has been far greater than it ever was since statistics began to be kept, “world politics” at the close of the century depend largely on finding a satisfactory means of distributing a so-called “surplus” of bread stuffs, which is sure to result in years when modern machinery applied to agriculture is favored by average conditions of heat and moisture. It was impossible for Malthus to include in his calculation of ratios such phenomena as the steam plow, the improved reaper and binder, and all the machinery of production and distribution which depends upon steam and electricity; but while his logic too largely ignored the beneficent spirit of the really educated human intellect and ignored altogether the creative results of this spirit manifesting itself in scientific discovery and invention, the same moral and intellectual impulses which controlled him in reaching his conclusions are still always a potent and frequently the decisive factor in government and in trade. He was born near Guildford, Surrey, February 17th, 1766. After graduating at Cambridge, he took orders in the English Established Church and settled as a curate in Surrey, where he wrote his first essay on the “Principle of Population” (1798). In 1803 he followed it with a revised and amended version, under the title of an “Essay on Population.” This work became immediately popular with the English Conservatives, though Malthus himself was a Whig. He wrote also “The Nature and Progress of Rent” (1815), and “Political Economy” (1820). His death occurred at St. Catharine’s, near Bath, December 23d, 1834.