THE MALTHUSIAD: FANTASIA ECONOMICA 25 
SHADE: “But to the end I was out of doors an ogre, an enemy 
of marriage and of the multitude, more especially of the labour- 
ing poor.” 
Y. E.: “That was because the full consequences of your cen- 
tral doctrine were not at first seen. I mean the supreme need 
of watching, supporting, and raising the general standard of liv- 
ing, so that what was done fairly well in your time by the middle 
and upper classes might be done by all classes, labouring poor 
included. It was left to that ‘precocious lad’ of whom you have 
just spoken to say plainly that you did not close the door of 
progress; you were the first to open it. Even socialists (and 
they are of very different quality from those of your day) are 
coming round to this view of the matter, without otherwise agree- 
ing with you altogether.” 
SHADE: “You have made me remember the happy days I 
passed at Haileybury when ‘the ogre’ lived the placid life of a 
man of letters. Que voulez-vous de moi?” 
Y. E.: “Votre bénédiction. 1 am narrating, not criticizing, 
and if you will forgive my youthful presumption I am going to 
tell in my own way what has happened to your cause after 1834. 
Prepare to be bewildered like any other Rip Van Winkle, whether 
in the body or out of it (for both happens). Hear the best news 
first. You have had a real victory, though you have founded no 
school, and your followers are broken up into groups that would 
puzzle you and sometimes offend. I shall not dwell on the class 
of whom even your amiability speaks with impatience. It is 
far from extinct; it may be considered a power, indirectly a 
political power; and some of your own admirers condone it as 
presenting the less dreadful of two ugly alternatives. They claim 
to have obeyed you best by disobeying you. With or without 
their assistance there has been, especially in your own country, 
a remarkable fall in the birth rate and death rate, with no such 
fall in marriages. I turn rather to your influence on scientific 
men. You have led Darwin and Wallace to give us a theory 
of the origin of species by natural selection and the struggle for 
existence. The philosopher, Herbert Spencer, has supported them 
in the main; and in general outline the theory has influenced all 
sorts and conditions of thoughtful men for the last sixty years. 
Like your own theory, it has needed modifications and is getting 
them. Out of it has grown a class of your followers who call