“The main peculiarity which distinguishes man from other animals, is the means of his support, is the power which he possesses of very greatly increasing these means.”

— Thomas Robert Malthus

Essay on the Principle of Population (1798; rev. through 1826)

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Thomas Robert Malthus 60

British political economist 1766–1834

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Context: What is it that distinguishes man from animals? It is not his upright posture. That was present in the apes long before the brain began to develop. Nor is it the use of tools. It is something altogether new, a previously unknown quality: self-awareness. Animals, too, have awareness. They are aware of objects; they know this is one thing and that another. But when the human being as such was born he had a new and different consciousness, a consciousness of himself; he knew that he existed and that he was something different, something apart from nature, apart from other people, too. He experienced himself. He was aware that he thought and felt. As far as we know, there is nothing analogous to this anywhere in the animal kingdom. That is the specific quality that makes human beings human.

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Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon book Histoire Naturelle

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Source: The False Principle of our Education (1842), p. 12

“The main peculiarity which distinguishes man from other animals, is the means of his support, is the power which he possesses of very greatly increasing these means.”

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Thomas Robert Malthus 60

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