200 THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE. 



We now see, perhaps, more clearly why Evolution 

 at the dawn of life entered into league with so strange 

 an ally as Want. The Evolution of Mankind was too 

 great a thing to entrust to any uncertain hand. The 

 advantage of attaching human progress to the Strug- 

 gle for Life is that you can always depend upon it. 

 Hunger never fails. All other human appetites have 

 their periods of activity and stagnation ; passions wax 

 and wane; emotions are casual and capricious. But 

 the continuous discharge of the function of Nutrition 

 is interrupted only by the final interruption Death. 

 Death means, in fact, little more than an interference 

 with the function of Nutrition ; it means that the 

 Struggle for Life having broken down, there can be 

 no more life, no further evolution. Hence, it has been 

 ordained that Life and Struggle, Health and Struggle, 

 Growth and Struggle, Progress and Struggle, shall be 

 linked together ; that whatever the chances of mis- 

 direction, the apparent losses, the mysterious ac- 

 companiments of strife and pain, the Ascent of Man 

 should be bound up with living. When it is remem- 

 bered that, at a later day, Morality and Struggle, and 

 even Religion and Struggle, are bound so closely that 

 it is impossible to conceive of them apart, the tre- 

 mendous value of this principle and the necessity for 

 providing it with indestructible foundations, will be 

 perceived. 



This association of the Struggle for Life with the 

 physiological function of Nutrition must be con- 

 tinually borne in mind. For the essential nature of 

 the principle has been greatly obscured by the very 

 name which Mr. Darwin gave to it. Probably no other 

 was possible ; but the effect has been that men have 



