Note 263-1 — Chapter III

There are, indeed, different opinions on this matter, and they were preponderant during the second half of the eighteenth century. Compare Condorcet, Tableau historique,[TN 120] des Progrès de l'Esprit humain, especially Epoque X, in which he treats of future progress. Nevertheless, he obscurely alludes (Œuvres, VIII, 350) to a time when no further increase of population should take place. Malthus, Principle of Population, III, ch. 1, thoroughly demonstrates that in regard to the great prolongation of human life which he foresaw, the idea of the indefinite and that of the infinite were confounded with each other.

In that young and vigorous country, the United States of America, we find a popular school which, to say the least, hints at the principle of infinite growth. Thus, for instance, Peshine Smith (Manual of Political Economy, New York, 1853) teaches that the means of subsistence consumed at the place of production are not destroyed, but may return just as much to the soil in the form of manure as they had previously drawn from it (ch. 1). Capital has a tendency to increase more rapidly than population (ch. 6). The rate of wages has a tendency to increase with the increase of population (ch. 5). Mechanical progress increases the value of human labor and causes that of capital to decline relatively (ch. 3). He reverses, with Carey, Ricardo's law of rent (ch. 2).

Carey, also, relying on the assumption that more fertile land is brought under cultivation as civilization advances, allows us to see no limits whatever to this growth. (Past, Present and Future, ch. 3.) Still more clearly is the principle of unlimited and continually accelerated growth laid down in his Principles of Social Science, I, 270. Carey illustrates this principle by means of the example of the continually accelerated motion of a falling body, without noticing the practical ad absurdum deductio involved in it, that at the end of the thousandth second a falling body reaches a velocity of 1,000,000 feet. (loc. cit., 204.) But even in England, at present, we find such thoughts at times. Banfield, for instance, can scarcely understand how the relative rates of wages, interest and rent can decrease, except by an increase of their absolute amounts. See his Organization of Industry, passim. And so v. Prittwitz entertains the most rosy-colored hopes. He has no doubt that all governments which are still bad will see the error of their ways and correct them. (Kunst reich zu werden, 79.)

The growth of capital and even of human wealth in general is capable of indefinite increase (81). The rate of interest would sink almost to zero if so much capital were accumulated that no "undertakers" could be found who care to use it (305). Large farming will entirely cease in the future (307), and when the system of railroads is entirely completed, the whole earth will present the appearance of one immense park (29). He would allay all fear concerning the exhaustion of combustible material by pointing out the possibility consequent upon improved means of communication, that a great many of the inhabitants of the colder regions of the earth might migrate in winter to a warmer climate (21). At the same time, artesian wells might be made to bring to the surface the internal heat of the earth, or metallic plates connected with the wings of a windmill, might be made to generate heat by their friction on one another (22). See the same author's Andeutungen über künftige Fortschritte und die Gränz en der Civilization, 21 Aufl., 1855.