TOOTH AND CLAW 



not be here in a world so well suited to his develop- 

 ment and well-being. In the conflict of forces he has 

 had to take his chances with other forms of life, but 

 his powers of adaptation and invention far surpass 

 those of all other creatures. Not an atom, not a peb- 

 ble, will turn aside to save him from destruction. 

 Unrelenting and unpitying Nature is the school in 

 which his powers have been developed, and for him 

 to call Nature "cruel" in her treatment of him is 

 for a child to upbraid the parent whose guidance 

 and discipline foster and safeguard the coming man. 

 Could man have become man on any other terms? 



Love is creation's final law, though Tennyson 

 seems to doubt it when he sees Nature " red in tooth 

 and claw." But tooth and claw do not necessarily 

 imply cruelty, since the crudest of all animals — 

 man — has them not; they imply the dependence of 

 one form of life upon another form, and are associ- 

 ated in our minds with that most heinous of all 

 crimes, murder. It is Nature's seeming indiffer- 

 ence to life which causes us to charge her with cru- 

 elty. Our minds can take in but a fraction of the 

 total scheme of things, and what we do take in we 

 make a personal application of to ourselves. We 

 humanize when we should generalize. 



The Germans willfully turned their backs upon 

 the natural biological law of righteousness or Tight- 

 ness, and their punishment has been swift and ade- 

 quate. They made a religion of cruelty, as man 



163 



