6 MAN AND ANIMALS 
In short, the animal is not a “‘horrid thing,” as it is painted in story and 
in many a dimly lighted imagination. There is nothing devilish about it. 
And here is the moral of the “devil fish’”’: If there is a corner of your mind 
that wants to attribute to the octopus malevolent qualities and powers that it 
does not possess, and is content to overlook or deny to it qualities and powers 
of interest and beauty that it does possess, mark my word, the same corner of 
your mind will tend to treat such at least of your fellow-men as you do not know 
well, in the same way. This unfortunate corner of your mind will, like all 
other corners, be true to itself—to its own qualities. It is the old impossibility 
of blowing hot and blowing cold at the same time.—Ritter (1). 
We may accept this as one of our relations to nature and general 
culture, and sanity toward nature as one of the benefits to be derived 
from study of science and nature. 
2. SCIENCE AND NATURE 
All biological problems are problems of nature. Evolution became a 
problem only when a large knowledge regarding the number and diversity 
of animal species had been acquired. This has been the problem around 
which most zodlogical facts have been accumulated. Indeed, most 
zoologists have little interest in problems not throwing light on evolution. 
The development of zodlogy has therefore been one-sided. Had geology 
clung as closely to the origin of the earth as zodlogy to evolution, it 
would not be the unified science which we see it today. The lack of 
unity in zodlogy has been caused in part by the neglect of the aspects 
which we are to take up here. In this connection, Thompson (2) has 
said of Brehm, one of the older students of natural history: “He [Brehm } 
had unusual power as an observer of the habits of animals. His 
particular excellence is his power of observing and picturing animal 
life as it is lived in nature, without taking account of which, biology is 
a mockery, and any theory of evolution a one-sided dogma.” It follows 
also that sanity in science is dependent upon a knowledge of nature. 
Our first steps in the task before us must accordingly be a consideration 
of wild nature as it really is. This can perhaps best be accomplished by 
comparing the reality with some of our conceptions of it. 
II. THE STRUGGLE IN NATURE 
The first step toward an understanding of our relation to nature, 
or rather the animals and animal communities of natural conditions, is 
to acquire a knowledge of the conditions of animals in a state of nature. 
There is much literature on this subject, but our conception of the 
struggle for existence and the survival of the fittest is too often entirely 
