Inception of Darwin's Theory - Malthus and Natural Law

Malthus and Natural Law

After returning to London on 1 August 1838 Darwin read a review of Auguste Comte's Positive Philosophy at the Athenaeum Club. It bolstered his pantheist ideas of natural laws, making him remark "What a magnificent view one can take of the world" with everything synchronised "by certain laws of harmony", a vision "far grander" than the Almighty individually creating "a long succession of vile Molluscous animals – How beneath the dignity of Him"! Only a "cramped imagination" saw God "warring against those very laws he established in all organic nature." His work on Coral Reefs and a paper theorising that Glen Roy had been an arm of the sea soldiered on. He visited the zoo to experiment, observing the reactions of the apes and seeing emotions like "revenge and anger", implying that "Our descent, then, of our evil passions." He needed an ally, and hinted to Lyell that his work was "bearing on the question of species", amassing "facts, which begin to group themselves clearly under sub-laws."

On 21 September he had a vivid dream "that a person was hung & came to life, & then made many jokes, about not having run away &c having faced death like a hero... showing scar behind that he had honourable wounds."

Then in late September he began reading "for amusement" the 6th edition of Malthus's An Essay on the Principle of Population which reminded him of Malthus's statistical proof that human populations breed beyond their means and compete to survive, at a time when he was primed to apply these ideas to animal species. Malthus had softened from the bleakness of the earlier editions, now allowing that the population crush could be mitigated by education, celibacy and emigration. Already Radical crowds were demonstrating against the harsh imposition of Malthusian ideas in the Poor Laws, and a slump was resulting in mass emigration. Lyell was convinced that animals were also driven to spread their territory by overpopulation, but Darwin went further in applying the Whig social thinking of struggle for survival with no handouts. His views were secular, but not atheistic. He asked how God's laws had produced "so high a mind" as ours, with purpose shown by descent geared towards the "production of higher animals", suggesting that "we are step towards some higher end".

Malthus's essay calculates from the birth rate that human population could double every 25 years, but in practice growth is kept in check by death, disease, wars and famine. Darwin was well prepared to see at once that this related to de Candolle's concept of "nature's war" and also applies to the struggle for existence amongst wildlife, so that when there is more population than resources can maintain, favourable variations that allow the organism to better use the limited resources available tend to be preserved, and unfavourable ones destroyed by being unable to get the means for existence, resulting in the formation of new species. On 28 September 1838 he noted this insight, describing it as a kind of wedging, forcing adapted structures into gaps in the economy of nature formed as weaker ones were thrust out. He now had a theory by which to work.