• I feel that out of the men who influenced Charles' Darwin, it was Thomas Malthus who had the greatest influence on him and shaped his theories of evolution.

• Thomas Malthus wrote Essay on the Principle of Population in 1978 which ended up being literature that Charles Darwin greatly admire and used as a stepping block to expand his own ideas from. Malthus' essay spoke of natural selection and that not only wild life and plant life, but also man kind tends to produce far too many offspring which could ultimately lead to the demise of man kind. He explained further that producing too much offspring made it so that there are not enough resources for everyone so only the stronger and more capable will survive. This idea was also expanded on by Darwin and theorized as the survival of the fittest. Malthus even went as far as to suggest that lower income families should not have as many children since they can not afford to support them as wealthier families could. This is something that was later used by China in there limited families to only reproducing 1 child. Malthus ideas were a springboard for many, but ultimately it was Charles Darwin who was influenced and expanded upon these ideas. http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/malthus.html 

• There are two of Darwin's points of Evolution that were directly related to the thoughts of Thomas Malthus being that resources are limited (overproduction of offspring) and who gets better access to resources (survival of the fittest). In fact these two points are closely related to each other by cause and effect. When any organism whether it be animal, plant, or even man produces too much offspring and overpopulates it leaves only limited resources to be consumed. When this happens it becomes a struggle to get the need resources, and in this battle the stronger will succeed and survive.

• I think that Darwin would have eventually figured these key points of evolution out on his own even if Thomas Malthus had not written about it first. Darwin was an amazing man who was on a path to discovery regardless of his predecessors. However, it is always easier to build a structure when there is already a strong foundation to support it. For this reason I believe that Malthus' idea only strengthened Darwin's expansion of it.

• Darwin's theories of evolution came at a time when opposing the church was not wise. Because of this Darwin kept his thoughts and finding mostly to himself and really only spoke of them to his brother. However, other writers and theorist found his ideas to be extremely helpful and used it to support their own theories.