THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE. l6l 



watchword of the day. Yet this designation is, perhaps, in 

 many respects not very happily chosen, and the phenomena 

 might probably have been more accurately described as 

 " Competition for the Means of Subsistence^ For under the 

 name of "Struggle for Life," many relations are compre- 

 hended which properly and strictly speaking do not belong 

 to it. As we have seen from the letter inserted in the 

 last chapter, Darwin arrived at the idea of the " Struggle 

 for Existence " from the study of Malthus' book " On the 

 Conditions and the Consequences of the Increase of Popula- 

 tion." It was proved in that important work, that the 

 number of human beings, on the average, increases in a 

 geometrical progression, while the amount of articles of food 

 increase only in an arithmetical progression. This dispro- 

 portion gives rise to a number of inconveniences in the 

 human community, which cause among men a continual 

 competition to obtain the necessary means of life, which 

 do not suffice for all. 



Darwin's theory of the struggle for life is, to a certain 

 extent, a general application of Malthus' theory of popula- 

 tion to the whole of organic nature. It starts from the 

 consideration that the number of possible organic indi- 

 viduals which might arise from the germs produced, is far 

 greater than the number of actual individuals whifch, in 

 fact, do simultaneously live on the earth's surface. The 

 number of possible or potential individuals is given us by 

 the number of the eggs and organic germs produced by 

 organisms. The number of these germs, from each of which, 

 under favourable circumstances, an individual might arise, 

 is very much larger than the number of real or actual 

 individuals — that is, of those that really arise from these 



