Darwin and Malthus: The Conflict of Existence

Darwin formulated his theory of natural selection after reading Thomas Robert Malthus' famous article in Principles of Population. Malthus based his population principle on the biological observation that most organisms produce more offspring than are likely to actually survive. Malthus believed that human reproduction, like other organisms, tended to increase faster than food resources, unless population growth was constrained by rapid growth, such as disease, war, and so on. Because of the imbalance between population growth rates and food resource growth rates, Malthus believed that the vast majority of people had to die without reproduction. Death, and in particular mass death, was the central idea that Darwin picked up from Malthus's article and later published. Adrian Desmond did not exaggerate his account of Thomas Huxley when he said that based on Darwin's theory "only by death at the level of genocide can a few human beings develop."[5] Certainly, the conflict of existence between beings is usually more peaceful than bloody conflicts, but Darwin noted that killing – including within the single species – is a natural part of this conflict: "This may be difficult, but we have nothing but admiration for the wild instinct of the queen bee, which always prompts her to destroy her little queens as soon as she hatches her eggs; or she herself kills her soul in conflict; for this is undoubtedly in the interest of the group; and both mother's love and mother's hatred although the latter is scarce are equal in regard to the solid principle of natural selection."[6] Darwin may have been impressed by the bee queen’s instinctive hatred of her sons and her killing of them – if that could be further portrayed – but he did not see it as a model of human behavior, because he believed that human instincts tended more toward love and altruism. But what if humans had stronger aggressive instincts than their altruistic instincts? - Dr. Richard Waikart. More: https://braheen.com/publications/من-داروين-إلى-هتلر/ — Source: Published on Facebook's "Braheen Center" page https://www.facebook.com/braheen.org/posts/pfbid02K1DYbe47qU3iTM5CoJeaBui22gHhRM5nv7YmzPPsFNvdwAHEJw1mse1dmKJ7TmJ5l