will soon be too great, and so throughout the ages there will be an “oscillation” between the blessings of progress and the evils of overcrowding, now the one predominating, now the other. In despair he clutches at the old fallacy, “the day is distant,” but he feels it fail him, and must needs add a new and startling solution of his own which Malthus freely denounces.[44] This is not the place to discuss the questions associated in our own times with Neo-Malthusianism.[45] But it is beyond all doubt that the Neo-Malthusians are the children not of Robert Malthus, but of Robert Owen. Malthus was not Malthus because he said, “The people are too many; thin them down”—any more than Darwin was Darwin because he said, “Species are not made, but grow.” If Darwinians are to be judged by Darwin, Malthusians must be judged by Malthus; and the originality of neither Malthus nor Darwin can be explained by a single phrase. We cannot understand the meaning of an author’s words, far less of his work, till we know the context in which they are set. Once know the context and we understand the text. The devil, citing Scripture for his purpose, only succeeds because he never quotes in full. It follows that, to understand the full meaning of the essay, we must go beyond its efficient cause, and take a view of its material cause, or the whole circumstances in which it was written. If the text of the sermon was Godwin and Condorcet, the application was to the poor of England and the philanthropists who were trying to relieve them.