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