THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE 71 



it is hidden from the light ; the child is pale 

 because, roughly speaking, it has not enough of 

 iron in its blood. The defect of the method is 

 that, unless its partiality be borne in mind, it 

 is apt to give a false simplicity to the facts, for 

 it is quite certain that we cannot at present re- 

 describe vital happenings in terms of modern 

 physics and chemistry vitalistic as these are. 

 The old materialism has been found out. 



The other method is to read man into the 

 beasts and even into the flowers of the field, to 

 interpret the life of animals and plants in terms 

 of human life. This is also a sound method as 

 far as it goes. Its defect is that, verification 

 being difficult, we are apt to land in fanciful an- 

 thropomorphism. Perhaps we may say, without 

 disrespect, that it was in great part Darwin's 

 method, just as the other was Spencer's. Darwin 

 approached the naturalist's problem from above, 

 Spencer from below. 



No better illustration of Darwin's wholesome 

 anthropomorphism can be found than the cardinal 

 idea of the struggle for existence. It is an idea 

 borrowed from human life; it was consciously 

 suggested to Darwin by reading Malthus; it was 

 subconsciously suggested by the keen industrial 

 competition, more striking because more novel 

 in Darwin's day than in ours. In human life 

 the phrase " struggle for existence " is a formula 

 summing up in three words half the misery and 

 half the happiness of mankind. It means that 

 when Nature has said to man " you must dip-^ 

 he has always answered back " I will live." l \It 

 means that he has fought with wild beasts and 



1 See " The Kingdom of Man," by Sir E. Ray Lankester. 



