He then adds,

There is no person who does not see how very distant such a period is from us, but shall we ever arrive at it?  It is equally impossible to pronounce for or against the future realization of an event which cannot take place but at an era when the human race will have attained improvements, of which we can at present scarcely form a conception.

Mr Condorcet’s picture of what may be expected to happen when the number of men shall surpass the means of their subsistence is justly drawn.  The oscillation which he describes will certainly take place and will without doubt be a constantly subsisting cause of periodical misery.  The only point in which I differ from Mr Condorcet with regard to this picture is the period when it may be applied to the human race.  Mr Condorcet thinks that it cannot possibly be applicable but at an era extremely distant.  If the proportion between the natural increase of population and food which I have given be in any degree near the truth, it will appear, on the contrary, that the period when the number of men surpass their means of subsistence has long since arrived, and that this necessity oscillation, this constantly subsisting cause of periodical misery, has existed ever since we have had any histories of mankind, does exist at present, and will for ever continue to exist, unless some decided change take place in the physical constitution of our nature.

Mr Condorcet, however, goes on to say that should the period, which he conceives to be so distant, ever arrive, the human race, and the advocates for the perfectibility of man, need not be alarmed at it.  He then proceeds to remove the difficulty in a manner which I profess not to understand.  Having observed, that the ridiculous prejudices of superstition would by that time have ceased to throw over morals a corrupt and degrading austerity, he alludes, either to a promiscuous concubinage, which would prevent breeding, or to something else as unnatural.  To remove the difficulty in this way will, surely, in the opinion of most men, be to destroy that virtue and purity of manners, which the advocates of equality, and of the perfectibility of man, profess to be the end and object of their views.

CHAPTER 9

Mr Condorcet’s conjecture concerning the organic perfectibility of man, and the indefinite prolongation of human life—­Fallacy of the argument, which infers an unlimited progress from a partial improvement, the limit of which cannot be ascertained, illustrated in the breeding of animals, and the cultivation of plants.

The last question which Mr Condorcet proposes for examination is the organic perfectibility of man.  He observes that if the proofs which have been already given and which, in their development will receive greater force in the work itself, are sufficient to establish the indefinite perfectibility of man upon the supposition of the same natural faculties and the same organization which he has at present, what will be the certainty, what the extent of our hope, if this organization, these natural faculties themselves, are susceptible of amelioration?