Read the passage and answer the four questions provided Essay

Read the passage and answer the four questions provided - Essay Example ut as by that law of out nature, which makes food necessary to the life of man, population can never actually increase beyond the lowest nourishment capable of supporting it†(Malthus, 431). Basically, this means that nature has made it so that humans must have food and water to survive, and this is how nature keeps the population in check because without enough nourishment humans will die, which keeps the population down. When the human population is at the appropriate equilibrium, there is enough food and resources to go around, which makes for a happy society. Thomas Malthus makes the assumption that the more food and resources that are available, the quicker the human population and demographics will grow. Without enough food to go around, the population is not likely to increase as the birth rates will decrease and death rates will increase, which creates a more stable population. Malthus believes that the period between the doubling of the population will be much lengthier if food becomes much more difficult to acquire(Malthus, 431). Overall, these assumption do appear to be valid in that it is common sense that without sustenance, any population is less likely to succeed and thrive. To a certain extent, the argument developed by Malthus appears to have some roots in the idea of natural selection. The overall idea with natural selection is that the strong will survive, and the weak will perish. With this type of argument in mind, it is fair to say that public relief for the poor is essentially going against natural selection. By providing food and charity to the poor, this weak population is being kept alive instead of dying off like nature intended it. Therefore, in the view of Thomas Malthus, public relief should be discontinued or halted altogether because keeping poor people alive continues the process of draining nature’s sustenance for the strong. In this way, charity is very harmful to the Earth and the human population as a whole because the