40 
DARWINISM 
CHAP. II 
is heartrending. We have a horror of all violent and sudden 
death, because we think of the life full of promise cut short, 
of hopes and expectations unfulfilled, and of the grief of 
mourning relatives. But all this is quite out of place in the 
case of animals, for whom a violent and a sudden death is in 
every way the best. Thus the poet’s picture of 
“ Nature red in tootli and claw 
With ravine ” 
is a picture the evil of which is read into it by our 
imaginations, the reality being made up of full and happy 
lives, usually terminated by the quickest and least painful of 
deaths. 
On the whole, then, we conclude that the popular idea of 
the struggle for existence entailing misery and pain on the 
animal world is the very reverse of the truth. What it 
really brings about, is, the maximum of life and of the enjoy¬ 
ment of life with the minimum of suffering and pain. Given 
the necessity of death and reproduction — and without these 
there could have been no progressive development of the 
organic world,— and it is difficult even to imagine a system 
by which a greater balance of happiness could have been 
secured. And this view was evidently that of Darwin himself, 
who thus concludes his chapter on the struggle for existence: 
“ When we reflect on this struggle, we may console ourselves 
with the full belief that the war of nature is not incessant, 
that no fear is felt, that death is generally prompt, and that 
the vigorous, the healthy, and the happy survive and 
multiply.” 
