IMAGERY IN SOCIAL GROWTH 333 



and claw with ravin," was the recurrent lash in their 

 poetic frenzy. Many good souls joined in the chorus 

 out of pure imitativeness, others because it helped to 

 soothe an uneasy sense of social unrightness, or ap- 

 peared to justify whatever special privileges and im- 

 munities they possessed, or eagerly sought to acquire. 



It is evident to every thoughtful biologist, I be- 

 lieve, that this cynical view of nature-action is super- 

 ficial, morbid, and absurdly tragic. Much of it, very 

 much indeed, is wholly fictitious and imaginary, and 

 has done incalculable harm. It has produced an in- 

 sidious pseudo-scientific philosophy of life, based on 

 a wholly false biological foundation. It has fortified 

 a false social philosophy which sees in social para- 

 sitism, in self-aggrandizement, in measureless acquisi- 

 tion of arbitrary power, the goal of a successful life, 

 and one which seeks to justify itself by an appeal to 

 the struggle for existence, the elimination of the unfit, 

 and the survival of the fittest. 



The philosophy of robbery is difficult to combat be- 

 cause it is always easier to point to a successful thief 

 than to prove that honesty is the best policy. In the 

 great world of nature-life, it is all the more difficult to 

 combat this half-witted philosophy of unadulterated 

 egoism because animal robbers and animal parasites 

 flaunt their ephemeral successes even more conspicu- 

 ously and shamelessly than man, while nature's more 

 basic system of cooperation and mutual service, inter- 

 woven as it is in the most intricate manner through 

 age-long periods, is not so easily understood, and its 

 results are so commonplace they fail to attract at- 

 tention. 



Thus in this new world of intellectual freedom 



