The supremacy of want as the ultimate check on population is illustrated by the instant expansion of population which is produced in these grades of humanity by an accession of plenty. When a tribe falls upon fertile land, its numbers swell, and its collective might, depending on numbers, becomes greater. The increase of food, however, seems in this case to lead to nothing else than increase of numbers. There is a melancholy equality of suffering between tribe and tribe, as well as between members of the same tribe. There is no distinction of rank, but only of sex and bodily strength, as regards endurance of hardships. It is in this connection that Malthus throws some light on the question how progress could ever take place at all. His answer is not unlike Adam Smith’s remark about the connection of high wages with good work. He says, that beyond a certain limit, hard fare and great want depress men below the very capacity of improvement; comfort must reach a certain height before the desires of civilized life can come into being at all. If the American tribes, he says, have remained hunters, it is not simply because they have not increased in numbers sufficiently to render the pastoral or agricultural state necessary to them. Reasons which Malthus does not pretend to particularize,[170] and which he allows to be unconnected with mere increase or decrease of numbers, have prevented these tribes from ever trying to raise cattle or grow corn at all. “If hunger alone could have prompted the savage tribes of America to such a change in their habits, I do not conceive that there would have been a single nation of hunters and fishers remaining; but it is evident that some fortunate train of circumstances, in addition to this stimulus, is necessary for this purpose; and it is undoubtedly probable that these arts of obtaining food will be first invented and improved in those spots which are best suited to them, and where the natural fertility of the situation, by allowing a greater number of people to subsist together, would give the fairest chance to the inventive powers of the human mind.” “A certain degree of [political] security is perhaps still more necessary than richness of soil to encourage the change from the pastoral to the agricultural state.”[171] These passages are remarkable because they seem to contradict the general tenor of the author’s writings. We were told with great emphasis in the first edition of the essay that difficulties generate talents,[172] and even the second and later are full of approving commentaries on the proverb, “Necessity is the mother of invention.”[173] The contradiction is soon solved. Malthus has no faith in the civilizing power of competition when it means a struggle among starved men for bare life, but much faith in it when it means the struggle for greater comfort among those who already have the animal necessaries.[174] The significance of his admissions will be noticed later.