12: The prolongation of human life

Godwin, Concordet, and others envision a future in which the lifespan of man is increased, approaching immortality, which strikes Malthus as a very odd notion: it's fairly obvious that the longer man lives, the greater the population will be, and the more "encumbered" the earth would become.

The methods by which man is supposedly able to prolong his lifespan range from "healthy living" (good diet, exercise, avoidance of conditions that weaken the body or make it susceptible to disease) to "mind over matter" (doubtless, a person with a mild cold can be reinvigorated by cheerful thoughts, but none have ever smiled away a case of smallpox).

But as Malthus has mentioned previously, the duration of human life seems to be fairly well fixed. We can avoid premature death and decrepitude by adopting certain habits, but there has been no credible evidence that we can increase our lifespan beyond a certain range. It is rare, though not unheard of, for some men to live for decades longer than the average, but it is unheard of for the entirety of a society to live significantly longer.

(EN: Again, this is much abbreviated, the notion of longevity being a side-show and the point in regard to economics having been made: that longevity is a blessing to the individual, but a problem to society, in that the very old are like the very young in needing more than they can produce. His various rebuttals to some of the more bizarre arguments of other theorists is a bit excessive and oblique.)