IX 



THE PRICE OF DEVELOPMENT. 



i 



THE biological law of the supremacy of the 

 strong over the weak, of the fit over the less 

 fit, which prevails throughout the world of living 

 things, gives us pause when it is applied to human 

 history and to the relations of man with man. Yet it 

 is true that the price of development is the struggle 

 for life. The road of evolution is an uphill road. When 

 struggle ceases, progress ceases, and evolution be- 

 comes devolution. Our strength is the strength of 

 the obstacles we overcome. The living machine, 

 contrary to the non-living, gains power from the 

 friction it begets. 



When we open the book of the biological history 

 of the globe, we find, to begin with, no force but 

 that which we call brute force, no justice but power, 

 no crime but weakness, no law but the law of battle. 

 The victory is to the strong and the race to the 

 swift. And it is well. It is on this plan, as I have so 

 often said, that the life of the globe has come to 

 what we behold it. Man has come to his present es- 

 tate, the trees in the forest, the grasses and flowers 

 of the field, the birds in the air, the fishes in the sea, 

 have each and all attained their present stage of 



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