Page:Progress and poverty - an inquiry into the cause of industrial depressions, and of increase of want with increase of wealth - the remedy (IA progresspovertyi00georiala).pdf/150

ment, and any danger that human beings may be brought into a world where they cannot be provided for, arises not from the ordinances of nature, but from social mal-adjustments that in the midst of wealth condemn men to want. The truth of this will, I think, be conclusively demonstrated when, after having cleared the ground, we trace out the true laws of social growth. But it would disturb the natural order of the argument to anticipate them now. If I have succeeded in maintaining a negative—in showing that the Malthusian theory is not proved by the reasoning by which it is supported—it is enough for the present. In the next chapter I propose to take the affirmative and show that it is disproved by facts.