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Malthus's real source of inspiration for his Essay was a story about goats on a Southeast Pacific island, said to have been left there by Juan Fernandez, a Spanish sailor. According to the tale, these goats multiplied and became a source of meat for mariners calling at the island. But the goats rapidly grew in number and began to consume all the sources of food on the island. In order to prevent British privateers—who molested Spanish trade—from making use of the goats' meat, the Spanish landed male and female dogs on the island. In time, the dogs began to grow in number, and killed most of the goats.
British Joseph Townsend wrote that in this way, a natural equilibrium was established. “The weakest of both species,” he went on to say, “were among the first to pay the debt of nature; the most active and vigorous preserved their lives. ... It is the quantity of food which regulates the number of the human species.”10
As we already stated, various natural circumstances may have an effect on an animal's numbers increasing or declining and on species surviving or becoming extinct. Yet it is a grave error to suppose that this dynamic also applies to human societies, and experience shows the terrible results of putting such an error into practice.
Under the Poor Law then in force in Great Britain, the poor were not left to go hungry, but were forced to work very hard. Townsend maintained that these laws obliging the poor to work resulted in excessive difficulties and protests. Instead, he claimed that it was more reasonable to bring the poor to heel by means of hunger. According to Townsend, “hunger will tame the fiercest animals, and will teach them civility, obedience, and subjection.”11 At the root of that ruthless and unconscionable attitude lies the error of classing people according to their material means and physical attributes. Such discrimination, totally incompatible with religious moral values, has disrupted the social order and led to chaos, anarchy and conflict throughout history.
After Townsend, the story of the goats and dogs also constituted the basis of Malthus's theses. It also represents the source of inspiration for the error expressed in the term “the survival of the fittest,” used by Herbert Spencer, and of Darwin's error of “evolution by natural selection.”
As we have already emphasized, applying to human beings certain laws that apply to animals was a great error made by a chain of people, beginning with Townsend and followed by Malthus, Spencer and Darwin. They regarded humans as savage creatures that could be reined in only by radical measures and kept under control by war, hunger and poverty. The truth is, though, that human beings are endowed with reason and common sense. They act in accordance with logic and their conscience, not according to instincts, as animals do.