MUTUAL AIT) AMONGST ANIMALS. 3 



to the fact of tlic mutual struggle amongst animals, while the 

 effects of mutual support have been totally ignored and neglected. 

 This has, no doubt, partly arisen from the importance which was 

 given by Darwin to the struggle for existence as the chief factor 

 in natural selection. Darwin's position in respect to this subject 

 is well known, and it can be summed up in very few words. His 

 argument is that every animal and vegetable, if not interfered with 

 by others, would multiply so rapidly that in a very short time 

 the descendants would become so numerous that there would not be 

 room for them to exist ; and that therefore there goes on amongst 

 them a fearful competition for life, in which those individuals alone 

 survive which are best fitted to the surrounding medium in which 

 they dwell. 



The theory of Evolution has placed the sciences of Palaeontology 

 and Biology upon a philosophical basis ; in fact, it may almost 

 be said to have created the science of Biology. It has been proved 

 that evolution is continually going on, that throughout the whole 

 of the strata of the earth, from the earliest fossilifei'ous rocks 

 to the present time, species have continually varied in accordance 

 with the diiierent circumstances in which they have been placed. 

 But while it has been proved that IS'atural Selection must have 

 played a very important part in securing those variations which 

 were useful to the species, Science, during the last thirty years, 

 has put forward more and more that other factor, indicated by 

 Lamarck, and which Herbert Spencer has described as direct 

 accommodation to the influence exercised by surrounding circum- 

 stances, or adaptation to environment. Many other causes of 

 progressive development, besides natural selection, have been 

 indicated, such as physiological selection and sexual selection. 

 Already, in his first work on the subject, ' The Origin of 

 Species,' Darwin warned his followers against taking the term 

 of "struggle for life" in too narrow a sense. This warning, 

 however, has not been heeded generally ; and many who are not 

 much acquainted with the life of animals took up these words 

 and used them in a wrong sense, construing them so as to give 

 the idea that all organisms are continually struggling against 

 each other for the sheer means of existence. Every day in our 

 human affairs we now hear these words, "the struggle for life." 

 If a tribe of Red Indians be exterminated, or if men be found 

 dying of hunger in rich societies, it is put down to the struggle 

 for life. Darwin warned his followers against this narrow con- 

 ception, and said that they must understand the term "rather 



