Yet when we contrast the haphazard literary life of the one, ending his days ingloriously[108] in a Government sinecure, unsuccessful and almost forgotten, with the academical ease of the other, centred in the sphere of common duties, and passing from the world with a fair consciousness of success, we feel a sympathy for Godwin that is of a better sort than the mere liking for a loser. It is a sympathy not sad enough for pity. It is not wholly sad to find Godwin in his old age a lonely man, his friends dropping off one by one into the darkness and leaving him solitary in a world that does not know him. The world that had begun to realize the ideas of Malthus had begun to realize the ideas of Godwin also. It was a world far more in harmony with political justice than that into which Godwin had sent his book forty years before. It was good that Malthus had lived to see the new Poor Law, but still better that both had lived to see the Reform of ’32. They passed away within two years of each other, Malthus in the winter of 1834, Godwin in the spring of 1836, the year of the first league of the people against the Corn Laws. In their death they were still divided, but, “si quis piorum manibus locus,” they are divided no longer, and they think no hard thoughts of each other any more. CHAPTER III. THESES. Position stated in the Essay—Tendency of Life to increase beyond Food—Problem not the same for Humanity as for the lower forms of Life—Man’s Dilemma—Tendency to increase not predicable of Food in same sense as of Life—The Geometrical and Arithmetical Ratios—Position stated in _Encyclopædia Britannica_—Milne’s Confirmation of the Geometrical Ratio—Arithmetical Ratio proved differently—Private Property a condition of great Production—Fallacy of confusing possible with actual Production—Laws of Man as well as of Nature responsible for necessity of Checks—Position stated in “Summary View”—The Checks on Population classified (_a_) objectively and (_b_) subjectively—Relation to previous Classification—Cycle in the movement of Population. The second essay applies the theory of the first to new facts and with a new purpose. The author, having gained his case against Godwin, ceases to be the critic and becomes the social reformer. Despairing to master all the forms of evil, he confines his study to one of them in particular, the tendency of living beings to increase beyond their means of nourishment. This phenomenon is important both from its cause and from its effects. Its cause is not the action of Governments, but the constitution of man; and its effects are not of to-day or yesterday, but constant and perpetual;[109] it frequently hinders the moral goodness and general happiness of a nation as well as the equal distribution of its wealth.