Читать книгу A Treatise on Political Economy - Antoine Louis Claude Destutt De Tracy - Страница 32

Of the multiplication of Individuals, or of Population.

Man multiplies rapidly wherever he has in abundance the means of existence.

Population never becomes retrograde, nor even stationary, but because these means fail.

Amongst savages it is soon checked, because their means are scanty.

Civilized people have more, they become more numerous in proportion as they have more or less of these means, and make better use of them. But the increase of their population is arrested also.

Then there exists always as many men as can exist.

Then it is also absurd to suppose they can be multiplied otherwise than by multiplying their means of existence.

Then finally it is barbarous to wish it, since they always attain the limits of possibility, beyond which they only extinguish one another.