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Darwinism justifies it. Darwin the biologist has shown 

 us how life may advance, build itself up, differentiate 

 itself; how fit may become fitter. He has not shown 

 us how unfit may tumble into fitness. Among the 

 postulates of his process of biological evolution are 

 numerous jit living forms. 



Organism and Organism. These, Darwin tells us, 

 have nothing to do with each other except to struggle 

 against each other. Not all creatures stand directly in 

 relations of struggle. Probably a whale and a robin red- 

 breast have no influence on each other's estate. But, 

 when organisms do affect one another, they do so on 

 terms of hostility. Some species prey upon others. 

 In adjacent species, and within the same species, there 

 is (from our point of view, not from theirs ; they have 

 not consciousness to intensify it), there is competition 

 for nourishment. All of them cannot survive times of 

 scarcity or danger. The weak have their chance but 

 get weeded out. 



This statement ignores (1) animal sociability and 

 mutual help, usually, not always, between creatures of 

 the same species. Competition, it may be argued, is 

 largely a human surmise or interpretation ; sociality is 

 a fact, psychical as well as physical, in animal life. 

 (2) It ignores the dependence of animals upon living 

 food of some kind. True, the relation of the eaten to 

 the eater is not one of friendship. Yet it is a highly 

 positive relation. It is not the whole truth about the 

 cosmos of life that its many species and innumerable 

 organisms are inconsistent with each other. The food 

 species does not simply struggle against the predatory 

 species by flight, mimicry, protective organs, etc. ; it 

 makes such species possible. 



Having made these deductions from its value, can 



