NUMBER XXXVII 

 STRUGGLE AND MUTUAL AID 



LIFE is an endeavour ; it expands, it intrudes 

 itself, it protests against limitations. One 

 living creature presses upon another, competes 

 with another, eats another. And for all this thrust 

 and parry between living creatures and the diffi- 

 culties that surround them we use the formula 

 " struggle for existence." Surely Darwin had this 

 broad view in mind when he wrote the strange sen- 

 tence : " Nature may be compared to a surface on 

 which rest ten thousand sharp wedges touching 

 each other and driven inward by incessant blows " 

 the idea being that any wedge that was relieved 

 from blows would at once rise above the rest. 

 But the comparison to wedges is not enough ; we 

 have to think, as it were, of living wedges, each 

 with a will of its own a will to rise, and then we 

 have got nearer the idea of the struggle for exist- 

 ence. Nature is always sifting or winnowing, and 

 this is expressed in another famous sentence of 

 Darwin's : "It may be said that natural selection 

 is daily and hourly scrutinizing throughout the 

 world the slightest variations " or novelties. The 



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