218 THE STRUGGLE FOIt THE LIFE OF OTHERS. 



new objects of desire appear, higher activities are 

 added to the lower. The first chapter or two of the 

 story of Evolution may be headed the Struggle for 

 Life ; but take the book as a whole and it is not a tale 

 of battle. It is a Love-story. 



The circumstances, as has been already pointed out 

 in the Introduction, under which the world at large 

 received its main impression of Evolution, obscured 

 these later and happier features. The modern revival 

 of the Evolution theory occurred almost solely in 

 connection with investigations in the lower planes of 

 Nature, and was due to the stimulus of the pure 

 naturalists, notably of Mr. Darwin. But what Mr. 

 Darwin primarily undertook to explain was simply 

 the Origin of Species. His work was a study in in- 

 fancies, in rudiments ; he emphasized the earliest 

 forces and the humblest phases of the world's develop- 

 ment. The Struggle for Life was there the most con- 

 spicuous fact at least, on the surface ; it formed the 

 key-note of his teaching ; and the tragic side of Nature 

 fixed itself in the popular mind. The mistake the 

 world made was twofold: it mistook Darwinism foi 

 Evolution a specific theory of Evolution applicable 

 to a single department, for a universal scheme ; and 

 it misunderstood Mr. Darwin himself. That the 

 foundations of Darwinism or what was taken for 

 Darwinism were the foundations of all Nature was 

 assumed. Dazzled with the apparent solidity of this 

 foundation, men made haste to run up a structure 

 which included the whole vast range of life vegetal, 

 animal, social based on a law which explained but 

 half the facts, and was only relevant, in the crude 

 form in which it was universally stated, for the child- 



