Although it is human nature to reproduce, Malthus argued that personal and overall population should be proportionate to supply of food through positive and preventive checks. Malthus believed that these two types of checks holds the population within limits. A positive check according to Malthus is a way to keep the population in control through natural causes. Those natural cause include disease, natural disasters, and anything that causes death naturally. Although the name of this population control is rather morbid, it is also true. The preventive check is limiting the size of families. According to Malthus “When the wages of a labour are hardly sufficient to maintain two children man marries and has five of six”(99). One of the ways to keep population in check is through abstinence, the restraint of sexual intercourse. Unfortunately, man still reproduces and “the last person he would think of causing is himself”(99). If these limit could possibly taken less lightly, many would not be in danger of starvation or unsanitary conditions that could lead to disease.