An Essay on the Principle of Population

Answers

• Q15TRANSCENDENCE

  Should extending human life indefinitely be a goal of technical progress?

  No. life has limits. Rejects Condorcet's indefinite prolongation of life, arguing that a partial improvement whose limit is unknown does not show that improvement is unlimited.

  With regard to the duration of human life, there does not appear to have existed from the earliest ages of the world to the present moment the smallest permanent symptom or indication of increasing prolongation. The observable effects of climate, habit, diet, and other causes, on length of life have furnished the pretext for asserting its indefinite extension; and the sandy foundation on which the argument rests is that because the limit of human life is undefined; because you cannot mark its precise term, and say so far exactly shall it go and no further; that therefore its extent may increase for ever, and be properly termed indefinite or unlimited. … In this case, the point of the greatest degree of improvement, or the smallest size of the head and legs, may be said to be undefined, but this is very different from unlimited, or from indefinite, in Mr Condorcet's acceptation of the term.

  Chapter IX · Chapter IX heading on Condorcet's conjecture confirmed; Gutenberg #4239 (1798 edition).