THE CONFLICT OF LIFE WITH LIFE 343 



It is evident that survival is impossible for all that are born. 

 Many are killed by the unfavorable conditions of life, many 

 are killed by mechanical injuries of various kinds, many are 

 killed by predatory enemies, and many are killed by parasites. 

 Finally, there are left those who remain to live out their lives. 

 But those do not all reach the full length of years. There are 

 still too many of them to live comfortably in the world. Many 

 of these are now destroyed in their competitive struggle with 

 one another. 



This idea of competition, borrowed from the forms of business 

 operations that prevailed during the nineteenth century, applies to living 

 things, for the most part, only in a figurative sense. There are really 

 very few animals, and no plants, that are engaged in a direct conflict 

 for the materials necessary to their well-being or to their survival. 

 There are, however, situations in which more individuals are born than 

 can possibly reach full development, and in the course of time we 

 find that some have endured, while others have perished. 



In a shaded wood, for example, the young seedlings grow 

 at different rates. Some grow fast enough to bring their tops 

 into the sunlight before others do : they have the advantage 

 of more light. They now grow faster, not only because they 

 are more favorably situated, but because the growth of their 

 " competitors " is retarded by lack of light. It is absurd to 

 suppose that these plants are struggling, in the sense in 

 which two wrestlers or two racers are struggling with each 

 other. No one does anything that is directly related to injur- 

 ing the other or to helping itself as against the other. The 

 result that one survives and the other perishes depends upon 

 certain external and certain internal conditions of the plants, 

 and not upon anything in the slightest degree resembling 

 effort, or offense or defense. 



It is only when we come to the highest animals — especially 

 birds and mammals — that there is a real competitive struggle 

 that involves direct danger to the participants. A number of 

 wolves, for example, may fight over a carcass. In any farmyard 



