Competitive System Amongst 'Lower Animals 755 



avoid the lurking places of their enemies; the common danger 

 inclines them to live in groups, and so the competitor has to 

 exert himself the more sharply. Turned on often by its would- 

 be prey, it has to resist as well as overcome the latter; its young, 

 in living the solitary life of the parent, is liable to attack; and 

 even the carniv^orous tendencies at times incline the individuals 

 of a species to fall on each other. From their rough-and- 

 tumble life, those forms have for the longest periods survived 

 which evolved and protected themselves by increasingly heavy 

 armor. But a striking feature of the entire palseontological 

 record is the constant extermination of these predatory, com- 

 petitive, often mail-encased and carnivorous groups, much more 

 abundantly and completely than the groups that possessed 

 colonial or gregarious habits. 



It has been true also, during recent millennia, that the com- 

 petitors, amongst all of the groups already named, are the 

 types that are poorest in species and in individuals. For 

 the predatory crabs, lobsters, myriapods, insects, molluscs, 

 fishes, reptiles, birds, and mammals do not compare in highly 

 evolved species, and specially in highly evolved individuals, 

 with those of the third and fourth groups. 



Competition then, as a fundamental zoological law, is not 

 nearly so "successful," we believe, as that of cooperation or 

 social union. The mental capacity also is relatively retarded. 

 Partial proof of this is got when man domesticates predatory 

 species like the dog, the cat, and the snake. For then the 

 removal of the competitive effort and all that this involves, 

 the life lived as part of a social human system, the often kind 

 and sympathetic treatment which has gradually drawn out 

 those fine qualities that we associate with the cat and dog, 

 combine to call forth those nobler traits that have helped 

 to make both world-wide in distribution. 



All animals then have had the selective choice of a highly 

 carnivorous or semi-carnivorous, or a phytivorous diet, but 

 continued selection of the first has led in nearly all cases to 

 isolated individualism, to tense nervous watchfulness, to wear 

 and tear of body, to concentration of the nerve powers mainly 



