Almost at the same time there appeared in France a volume closely resembling Godwin’s, entitled _Esquisse d’un Tableau historique des Progrès de l’Esprit humain_, written by Condorcet (1794). It displays the same confidence in the possibility of achieving happiness through the all-powerful instrumentality of science, which, if not destined actually to overcome death, was at least going to postpone it indefinitely.[293] This optimistic book, written by a man who was about to poison himself in order to escape the guillotine, cannot leave us quite unmoved. But, death abolished, Condorcet finds that he has to face the old question propounded to Godwin: “Can the earth always be relied upon to supply sufficient means of subsistence?” To this question he gives the same answer: either science will be able to increase the means of subsistence or reason will prevent an inordinate growth of population. It was inevitable, in accordance with the law of rhythm which characterises the movements of thought no less than the forces of nature, that such hasty optimism should provoke a reaction. It was not long in coming, and in Malthus’s essay we have it developed in fullest detail. To the statement that there are no limits to the progress of mankind either in wealth or happiness, and that the fear of over-population is illusory, or at any rate so far removed that it need cause no apprehension, Malthus replied that, on the contrary, we have in population an almost insurmountable obstacle, not merely looming in the distant future, but pressing and insistent[294]—the stone of Sisyphus destined to be the cause of humanity’s ceaseless toil and final overthrow. Nature has planted an instinct in man which, left to itself, must result in starvation and death, or vice. This is the one fact that affords a clue to men’s suffering and a key to the history of nations and their untold woes. Everyone, however little acquainted with sociological study, knows something of the memorable formula by which Malthus endeavoured to show the contrast between the frightful rapidity with which population grows when it is allowed to take its own course and the relative slowness in the growth of the means of subsistence. The first is represented by a geometrical series where each successive number is a multiple of the previous one. The second series increases in arithmetical progression, that is, by simple addition, the illustration being simply a series of whole numbers: 1 2 4 8 16 32 64 128 256 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9