Claudius F. Mayer: From Plato to Pope Paul / Orvostörténeti Közlemények – Supplementum 17. (Budapest, 1989)

conception, and points out that, in spite of the edict of HENRY II, abortions increased in number in France. 393 In G. de MAUPASSANT'S story ("Ų¿nų i e beaųté

", Par., ca. 1910). French men of refinement looked with horror upon a beautiful woman who complained of perpetual child-bearing by her insensitive husband: ".. .plus nous sommes civilisés, intelligen s, raffinés, plus nous devons vaincre et dompter l'instinct animal qui représente en nous la volonté de Dieų." (p. 40). 394 Chevalier der CERFVOL (1772): La gamologie ou Véducation des filles destinées au marriage. Par., Cf. SAUVY, A. (1951/52); Population Studies

, 5.: 3-22, on 16. 395 In 1820, the German C. A. WEINHOLD suggested infibulation to prevent young men from marrying and having families before they could support them. Cf. FINCH, I.e. footn. 12, 72. 396 Cf. DOOLITTLE, J. (1866): Social Life in China, vol. 2., 205; q. by SCOTT, I.e. footn. 150, 146. 397 OSBORN, I.e. footn. 380. 398 SHOCKLEY, W. B. (1965): Nobel Conf. 1: 63-105.—In 1947, at the first session of the U.N. Population Commission, RABISHKO, Soviet delegate, stated: "I would consider it barbaric for the Commission to contemplate a limitation of marriages or of legitimate births, and this for any country whatsoever, at any period whatsoever.. With an adequate social organization, it is possible to face any increase in population." (Cf. PETERSEN, I.e. footn. 372, 246). 399 "Les hommes multiplient comme les rats dans une grange s'ils ont le moyen de subsister." (MIRABEAU; q. by DUMONT, A. (1890): Dépopulation, etc., Paris.) 400 To this idea, American witticism added the following criticism: "That the first want of man is his dinner, and the second his girl, were truths known to every democrat and aristocrat, long before the great philosopher Mal ĥus arose to think he enlightened the world by the discovery."' (President John ADAMS, in a letter of 15 Apr. 1824, to John TAYLOR, of Virginia. Cf. COCKS, I.e. footn. 379.) 401 McATEE, W. L. (1936): Scientific Monthly,- 42: 444, states that all man's food consists of organism everyone of which has the same potentiality for geometrical increase as himself, and most of them at a much higher rate (445). 402 PROUDHON stated that the Malthusian theory means assassination of politics, by philanthropy for God's sake ("La théorie de Mal ĥus, e'est la théorie de l'assassinat politique, de l'assassinate par philanthropic, pour l'amour de Dieų"). Karl MARX (see his Kapital, vol. 2., 629) attacked Mal ĥus in the most violent and offensive language.

—Already before Mal ĥus, many referred to the need for checks to keep population down, thus RALEIGH, MACHIAVELLI, BOTERO, T. A. MANN (1755-1809).—Simultaneously with MALTHUS, but independently from him, a few enlightened Chinese and Japanese philosophers also worried about geometrical population growth, and feared that it will outstrip the more slowly growing food production. Cf. Liang-Chi HUNG (1744-1809), the Chinese Mal ĥus, and Honda TOSHIAKI (1744-1821), the Japanese Mal ĥus Cf. SILBERMAN, L. (1959/60

): Population Studies, 13: 257. HUNG also had an idea about the survival of the fittest.

—VOLTAIRE (see his Oeuvres: Population

, XXXI

: 472.) considered a geometrically proportioned population growth an absurd chimaera:— P. F. VERHULST, Belgian mathematician, worked out a "logistic curve" in 1838 which seems to express best the Law of Population growth. It is a stretched out S curve which remarkably fits a single cycle of development of all living beings. For its general formula, and details see PEARL, I.e. footn. 369. 403 GALTON thought that.

.. "it is the most pernicious rule of conduct in its bearing upon the race.

.. It is.

.. calculated to bring utter ruin upon the breed of any country where the doctrine prevailed." Cf. GALTON, F. (1869). Hereditary Genius, London. He also stated that the trouble with the Melthusian rule is that only the prudent would follow it while the imprudent were necessarily left free to disregard it.

.. "It may seem monstrous that the weak should be crowded out by the strong, but it is still more monstrous that the races best fitted to play their part on the stage of life should be crowded out by the incompetent, the ailing, and the desponding." (Ibid., 356-357).—MALTHUS in his later correspondence limited the moral restraint to the delaying of marriage to mature years for both males and females, and strict chastity for all not in wedlock. Cf. WOODRUFF, A. E. (1924-25): Birth Control, 8: 114.—High minimum age of marriage was also a legal restriction in many German states of the early xix. ct. Later such laws had to be repelled because of the increased illegitimacy rate. Cf. KŅODEŁ, I.e. footn. 383.—Before World War I, Swedish women who delayed their marriage to the average 71