THE STRUGGLE FOB THE LIFE OF OTHERS. 219 



hood of the world. It was impossible for such an 

 edifice to stand. Natural history cannot in any case 

 cover the whole facts of human history, and, so inter- 

 preted, can only fatally distort them. The mistake 

 had been largely qualified had Mr. Darwin's followers 

 even accepted his foundation in its first integrity; 

 but, perhaps because the author of the theory himself 

 but dimly apprehended the complement of his thesis, 

 few seem to have perceived that anything was amiss. 

 Mr. Darwin's sagacity led him distinctly to foresee that 

 narrow interpretations of his great phrase " Struggle 

 for Existence " were certain to be made ; and in the 

 opening chapters of the Origin of /Species, he warns 

 us that the term must be applied in its "large and 

 metaphorical sense, including dependence of one being 

 on another, and including (which is more important) 

 not only the life of the individual, but success in leav- 

 ing progeny." x In spite of this warning, his over- 

 mastering emphasis on the individual Struggle for 

 Existence seems to have obscured, if not to his own 

 mind, certainly to almost all his followers, the truth 

 that any other great factor in Evolution existed. 



The truth is there are two Struggles for Life in 

 every living thing the Struggle for Life, and the 

 Struggle for the Life oi Others. The web of life is 

 woven upon a double set of threads, the second thread 

 distinct in color from the first, and giving a totally 

 different pattern to the finished fabric. As the whole 

 aspect of the after-Avoiid depends on this distinction 

 of strands in the warp, it is necessary to grasp the 

 distinction with the utmost clearness. Already, in 

 the introductory chapter, the nature of the distinction 

 1 Ori'jin of .Species, Gth edition, p. 50. 



