36 THE STUDY OF ANIMAL LIFE CHAP, m 



that he used the phrase ' struggle for existence ' "in 

 a large and metaphorical sense, including the dependence 

 of one being on another, and including (which is more 

 important) not only the life of the individual, but success 

 in leaving progeny." He also acknowledged the import- 

 ance of mutual aid, sociability, and sympathy among 

 animals, and clearly saw that if, in the clash that occurs 

 when insurgent living creatures find themselves up 

 against difficulties and limitations, one way out be an 

 internecine competition around the platter of subsistence, 

 another way out is to increase the flow of the milk of 

 animal kindness. Discussing sympathy, Darwin wrote, 

 ' In however complex a manner this feeling may have 

 originated, as it is one of high importance to all those 

 animals which aid and defend one another, it will have 

 been increased through natural selection ; for those 

 communities which included the greatest number of the 

 most sympathetic members would nourish best, and 

 rear the greatest number of offspring." 



We are dwelling on this because of the very unfor- 

 tunate tendency there has been to narrow Darwin's 

 conception of " the struggle for existence," by exaggerat- 

 ing the occurrence of internecine competition. Thus 

 Huxley wrote, ' Life was a continuous free-fight, and 

 beyond the limited and temporary relations. of the family, 

 the Hobbesian war of each against all was the normal 

 state of existence." Against which Kropotkin argued 

 circumstantially in his Mutual Aid (1904) showing that 

 this ' ' view of nature has as little claim to be taken as a 

 scientific deduction as the opposite view of Rousseau, 

 who saw in nature but love, peace, and harmony des- 

 troyed by the accession of man." The fact is that " the 

 struggle for existence" is a formula for all the individual 

 and experimental reactions and endeavours, shifts and 

 struggles that organisms exhibit in the face of all manner 

 of limitations and difficulties. 



2. Armour and Weapons.- -To feel the reality of the 

 struggle, one has only to take a survey of the animal 

 kingdom. Everywhere they brandish weapons or are 

 fortified with armour. " The world," Diderot said, " is 



