Inert Torpor

Robert Malthus would not have liked Idle Theory. For him, evolution was a process necessary to awaken inert matter into busy life and activity.

I should be inclined, therefore, ... to consider the world and this life as the mighty process of God, not for the trial, but for the creation and formation of mind, a process necessary to awaken inert chaotic matter into spirit, to sublimate the dust of the earth into soul, to elicit an ethereal spark from the clod of clay. And in this view of the subject, the various impressions and excitements which man receives through life may be considered as the forming hand of his Creator, acting by general laws, and awakening his sluggish existence, by the animating touches of the Divinity, into a capacity for superior enjoyment. The original sin of man is the torpor and corruption of the chaotic matter into which he may be said to be born.
(Malthus. 1st Essay. ch. 18)

For Malthus, idleness or indolence was not merely sinful: it was Original Sin. The Divinity acted to goad inert matter into life, and get it to Do Something, rather than Do Nothing.

The first great awakeners of mind seem to be the wants of the body... They are the first stimulants that arouse the brain of infant man into sentient activity, and such seems to be the sluggishness of original matter that unless by a peculiar course of excitements other wants, equally powerful, are generated, these stimulants seem, even afterwards, to be necessary to continue that activity which they first awakened. The savage would slumber forever under his tree unless he were roused from his torpor by the cravings of hunger or the pinchings of cold, and the exertions that he makes to avoid these evils, by procuring food, and building himself a covering, are the exercises that form and keep in motion his faculties, which otherwise would sink into listless inactivity. From all that experience has taught us concerning the structure of the human mind, if those stimulants to exertion which arise from the wants of the body were removed from the mass of mankind, e have much more reason to think that they would be sunk to the level of brutes, from a deficiency of excitements, than that they would be raised to the rank of philosophers by the possession of leisure.
(Malthus. 1st Essay. ch. 18)

For Malthus, Nature is idle, and natural human life equally indolent. It requires a constant spur - a kind of continuous electric shock treatment - to raise men to the rank of philosophers.

Necessity has with great truth been called the mother of invention. Some of the noblest exertions of the human mind have been set in motion by the necessity of satisfying the wants of the body. Want has not infrequently given wings to the imagination of the poet, pointed the flowing periods of the historian, added acuteness to the researches of the philosopher...
(Malthus. 1st Essay. ch. 18)

The spur of necessity, for Malthus, is what drives men to great and noble achievements. And these achievements, in poetry and in history and in philosophy, are meritorious in themselves. Without some incessant spur, there would be no great art or music or literature. Men must be whipped and beaten to perform these noble acts. The industry and foresight of the husbandman, the ingenuity of the artificer, the researches of the physician, all require to be forced into existence.

Could we suppose the period arrived, when there was not further hope of future discoveries, and the only employment of mind was to acquire pre-existing knowledge, without any efforts to form new and original combinations, ... the finest feature of intellect would be lost; everything allied to genius would be at an end; and it appears to be impossible that under such circumstances any individuals could possess the same intellectual energies as were possessed by a Locke, a Newton, or a Shakespeare, or even by a Socrates, a Plato, an Aristotle or a Homer.
(Malthus. 1st Essay. ch. 19)

It is clear that Malthus admired the genius and energy of Locke and Newton not because they contributed anything useful to humanity, but because they were energetic geniuses. Newton's Optics, or his Laws of Motion, were ends in themselves - masterly works of natural philosophy.

For Malthus, human life was not valuable in itself, but for what it produced. Newton himself was of little interest: it was the Optics he had written that really mattered. The sufferings of the artisan were of no account: what mattered was the Sevres porcelain that he produced, which would anyway outlast him, and be added to the catalogue of human achievement. In this Malthus spoke for his age, perhaps for an era.

In Idle Theory, the natural condition of life, human or otherwise, is taken to be one of toil rather than idleness. The process of evolution generates a series of idleness-increasing innovations. Human innovations of every kind are intended to render hard-working life more tolerably easy. It was Aristotle, one of the geniuses cited by Malthus, who wrote:

Also it is commonly believed that happiness depends on leisure; because we work so that we may have leisure, just as we make war in order that we may live in peace.
(Aristotle. Ethics. Book X, vii)

And the Latin roots of the word Necessity may be traced to 'ne-' (not) and 'cessare' (to be idle). To say that necessity is the mother of invention is then to say that lack of idleness is the mother of invention, and that the goal of that invention is to restore or recover idleness, and that any invention that fails to do so is worthless.

In Malthus' theodicy, the Divinity is a busybody goading humanity into action, albeit through the agency of general natural laws. In Idle Theory, Divinity is perfect idleness, the unattainable goal of all life. The Deus Otiosus of Idle Theory is perfectly inactive, tranquil, serene, and immortal - and the demonic is busy, toiling, industrious. Thus the devil of Idle Theory is Malthus' god. And the industry that Malthus admired is Idle Theory's curse.

Malthus was the curate of Albury when he wrote the First Essay. It is worth noting that, after the intervention of certain unnamed senior clerics in the Church of England, he withdrew Chapters 18 and 19 (those quoted in this essay) from subsequent editions of the Essay on Population. But he appears never to have publicly renounced the views he expressed in those chapters.

Perhaps the last should be left for an agreement.

If we ... consider man as he really is, inert, sluggish, and averse to labour, unless compelled by necessity...
(Malthus. First Essay. Ch.18)

In this observation, Idle Theory concurs: man is indeed averse to labour. But, unlike Malthus, Idle Theory goes on to assert that this is exactly what he ought to be, because it is precisely this aversion to labour which has underpinned human technological innovation. If men had not been averse to labour, they would never have developed labour-saving tools and technologies, and they would, as a direct result, have been extinct many thousands of years ago.