42 
done so he afterwards calls in the agencies I have mentioned, 
which may be called anything except beneficent, to counteract this 
power of increase, I cannot look upon Nature so. It involves self 
contradiction in the Creator. It is looking at things in the wrong 
way, beginning at the wrong end of the chain, putting the conse- 
quent for the antecedent, and vice versa. 
Let us view it all from another point. Suppose that instead of’ 
beginning with the Malthusian ‘“ tendency,” we start with the fact 
(as fact it is), that a small proportion of either seeds, young plants 
or the young of animals come to maturity, and ask ourselves how 
the species can ever be kept up. I mean that instead of imagining 
those destructive agencies to be the consequence of great fecundity, 
we may, I think, look on the Malthusian ‘ tendency” as a provi- 
sion against the evil results (at least they appear evil to us) of the 
destructive agencies. I think we have quite as much right to 
regard Nature from this point of view as from the other, and the 
mind does not so readily revolt from it. 
It is a great fact that plants have not only to reproduce their 
kind, but to serve as food for animals. Also that one class of 
animals have to serve as food for another, as well as to preserve 
their own species. Just as'man has a work to do in the world 
among his fellow men and among his fellow animals, so the lower 
animals and the plants were created for other purposes besides that 
of reproducing their kind. The seeds of plants are used not only 
as germs of future plants but as food for hosts of animals; and 
even when regarded only in the reproductive light, we must 
remember what a large proportion decay without ever performing 
their allotted function. Darwin himself occasionally takes the 
view 1 am advancing, ‘‘A large number of eggs,’’ he says, ‘is of 
some importance to those species which depend on a fluctuating 
amount of food, for it allows them rapidly to increase in number. 
But the real importance of a large number of eggs or seeds is to 
make up for much destruction at some period of life. , 
many eggs or young are destroyed, many must be produced, or the 
species must become extinct.” I cannot help thinking it preferable 
that, instead of asking why all this destruction? and answering by 
the fecundity of plants and animals, we should ask the question, 
Why is nature so prolific, so bountiful? Why do fishes yield their 
eggs by millions, and flowers their seeds by thousands? Is it not 
because they are made subservient to other purposes besides repro- 
duction? And because each does not get its fair chance in the 
world of life, does not even enter on the struggle for existence ? 
It may fall as a seed by the wayside, it may serve as food for other 
creatures. Whenever herrings lay their eggs the flat fishes con- 
gregate and devour them by thousands, and get thereby in their 
