Malthus gives us a picture of man at the cross-roads. Straight in front of him lies the road to misery, on the right the path of virtue, while on the left is the way of vice. Towards the first man is impelled by a blind instinct. Malthus warns him to rein in his desires and seek escape along either by-road, preferably by the path on his right. But he fears that the number of those who will accept his advice and choose “the strait road of salvation” will be very small. On the other hand, he is unwilling to admit, even in the secrecy of his own soul, that most men will probably follow the road that leads on to vice, and that masses will rush down the easy slope towards perdition. In any case the prospect is anything but inviting. * * * * * No doctrine ever was so much reviled. Imprecations have been showered upon it ever since Godwin’s memorable description of it as “that black and terrible demon that is always ready to stifle the hopes of humanity.” Critics have declared that all Malthus’s economic predictions have been falsified by the facts, that morally his doctrines have given rise to the most repugnant practices, and not a few French writers are prepared to hold him responsible for the decline in the French birth-rate. What are we to make of these criticisms? History certainly has not confirmed his fears. No single country has shown that it is suffering from over-population. In some cases—that of France, for example—population has increased only very slightly. In others the increase has been very considerable, but nowhere has it outstripped the increase in wealth. The following table, based upon the decennial censuses, gives the _per capita_ wealth of the population of the United States, the country from which Malthus obtained many of his data: Year Dollars 1850 308 1860 514 1870 780 1880 870 1890 1036 1900 1227 1905 1370 In fifty years the wealth of every inhabitant has more than quadrupled, although the population in the same interval also shows a fourfold increase (23 millions to 92 millions).[303] Great Britain, _i.e._ England and Scotland, at the time Malthus wrote (1800-5), had a population of 10½ millions. To-day it has a population of 40 millions. Such a figure, had he been able to foresee it, would have terrified Malthus. But the wealth and prosperity of Great Britain have in the meantime probably quadrupled also.