Essays on Mankind and Political Arithmetic by Sir William Petty
page 24 of 129 (18%)
page 24 of 129 (18%)
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David's reign, increased from 603,000 to 1,100,000.
On the other hand, if we pitch upon a less number, as 100 years, the world would have been over-peopled 700 years since. Wherefore no one number will solve the phenomena, and therefore we have supposed several, in order to make the following table, which we again desire historians to correct, according to what they find in antiquity concerning the number of the people in each age and country of the world. We did (not long since) assist a worthy divine, writing against some sceptics, who would have baffled our belief of the resurrection, by saying, that the whole globe of the earth could not furnish matter enough for all the bodies that must rise at the last day, much less would the surface of the earth furnish footing for so vast a number; whereas we did (by the method afore mentioned) assert the number of men now living, and also of those that had died since the beginning of the world, and did withal show, that half the island of Ireland would afford them all, not only footing to stand upon, but graves to lie down in, for that whole number; and that two mountains in that country were as weighty as all the bodies that had ever been from the beginning of the world to the year 1680, when this dispute happened. For which purpose I have digressed from my intended purpose to insert this matter, intending to prosecute this hint further upon some more proper occasion. A TABLE SHOWING HOW THE PEOPLE MIGHT HAVE DOUBLED IN THE SEVERAL AGES OF THE WORLD. |
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