In society, as it was in the first years of the nineteenth century, Malthus thinks he can trace out even by his own observation an “oscillation,” or what it is the fashion to call a “cycle,” in the movement of population. History does not show it well, simply because “the histories of mankind which we possess are in general only of the higher classes,”[152] and it is the labouring classes to which the observation applies. Their painful experience of the ruder checks has not prevented a “constant effort” in the labouring population to have larger families than they can well support. The consequence is that their numbers are increased; they must divide amongst eleven and a half millions the food that was formerly divided among eleven millions; they must have lower wages and dearer provisions. But this state of distress will so check population that in process of time the numbers will be almost at a standstill, while at the same time, since the demand for food has been greater and labour has been cheaper, the application of capital to agriculture will have increased the available food. The result will be the same tolerable degree of comfort as at the beginning of the cycle, and the same relapse from it as at the second stage. He conceives the two stages to follow each other as naturally as sunshine rain and rain sunshine. The existence of such a cycle may remain concealed from the ordinary historian, if he looks merely to the money wages of the labourer, for it frequently happens that the labourer gets the same sums of money for his wages during a long series of years when the real value of the sums has not remained the same,—the price of bread in what we have called the second stage of the cycle being much dearer than it was in the first, and than it will be in the third.[153] Though Malthus expressly qualifies his statements by showing that civilization tends to counteract these fluctuations, it certainly seemed to be his belief in 1803 that on the whole the working classes of Europe, and especially of England, were powerless to escape from them. How far this view is justified will be seen presently. CHAPTER IV. THE SAVAGE, BARBARIAN, AND ORIENTAL. Simile supplanted by Fact—Savage Life—Population dependent not on possible but on actual Food—Indirect Action of Positive Checks—Hunger not a Principle of Progress—Otaheite a Crux for Common Sense—Cycle in the Movement of Population—Pitcairn Island—Barbarian and Oriental—Nomad Shepherds—Abram and Lot—Cimbri and Teutones—Gibbon _versus_ Montesquieu—“At bay on the limits of the Universe”—Misgovernment an indirect Check on Population—Ancient Europe less populous than Modern—Civilization the gradual Victory of the third Check.