Before I proceed, I must stop to observe that I have just been perusing the corrections, additions, &c. to the third and _last_ edition of the Essay; and I confess I have not much heart to go on. The pen falls from my hand. For to what purpose is it to answer a man, who has answered himself, who has hardly advanced an opinion that he has not retracted, who after all your pains to overturn the extravagant assertions he had brought forward, comes and tells you, Why I have given them up myself; so that you hardly know whether to look upon him in the light of an adversary or an ally. I do not like this shadow-fighting, any more than Sancho liked his master’s fighting with enchanters. When Don Quixote had to encounter the knight of the Prodigious Nose, his valour was inflamed, and he rushed fiercely on his antagonist, but when after having unhorsed him, he found that it was his old friend and neighbour the Batchelor Carrasco, the fury of his arm was suspended, and he knew not what to say or do.[10] Till Mr. Malthus lays aside his harlequin’s coat and sword, and ceases to chase opinions through a rapid succession of varying editions, it is not an easy matter to come up with him or give him fair battle. It was thought a work of no small labour and ingenuity to make a harmony of the Evangelists. I would recommend it to some one (who thinks himself equal to the task) to make a harmony of Mr. Malthus’s different performances. Till this is done, it seems impossible to collect the sense of his writings, and consequently to answer them. It should not therefore be the object of any one who would set himself to answer Mr. Malthus, so much to say that such and such are the real and settled opinions of that author, as that such opinions are floating in different parts of his writings, that they are floating or fixed in the minds of his readers, and that those opinions are not so correct as they might be. If Mr. Malthus had chosen to disclaim certain opinions with their consequences, advanced in the first edition, instead of denying that he ever held such opinions, though he may still be detected with the _manner_, he would have saved me the trouble of writing, and himself the disagreeable task of reading, this _rude_ attack upon them. Mr. Malthus lays down as the basis of all his reasonings the two following positions, viz. ‘First, that food is necessary to the existence of man.’ ‘Secondly, That the passion between the sexes is necessary, and will remain nearly in its present state.’