THE FAITH OF A NATURALIST 



light without shade, or warmth without cold, or life 

 without death, or development without struggle. 

 The struggle for life, of which Darwinism makes so 

 much, is only the struggle of the chick to get out of 

 the shell, or of the flower to burst its bud, or of the 

 root to penetrate the soil. It is not the struggle of 

 battle and hate — the justification of war and usur- 

 pation — it is for the most part a beneficent strug- 

 gle with the environment, in which the fittest of the 

 individual units of a species survive, but in which 

 the strong and the feeble, the great and the small of 

 species alike survive. The lamb survives with the 

 lion, the wren with the eagle, the Esquimo with the 

 European — all manner of small and delicate forms 

 survive with the great and robust. One species of 

 carnivora, or of rodents, or herbivora, does not, as a 

 rule, exterminate another species. It is true that 

 species prey upon species, that cats eat mice, that 

 hawks eat smaller birds, and that man slays and 

 eats the domestic animals. Probably man alone has 

 exterminated species. But outside of man's doings 

 all the rest belongs to Nature's system of checks and 

 balances, and bears no analogy to human or inhu- 

 man wars and conquests. 



Life struggles with matter, the tree struggles with 

 the wind and with other trees. Man struggles with 

 gravity, cold, wet, heat, and all the forces that hin- 

 der him. The tiniest plant that grows has to force its 

 root down into the soil; earlier than that it has to 



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