86 DARWINISM AND HUMAN LIFE 



Darwin regarded as taking the place of the human 

 breeder in free nature, is not a direct struggle be- 

 tween carnivores and their prey, but is the assumed 

 competition for survival between individuals of 

 the same species, of which, on an average, only 

 those survive to reproduce which have the greatest 

 power of resistance, whilst the others, less favour- 

 ably constituted, perish early." 1 



Here, however, as in not a few other instances, 

 Darwin is broader than many Darwinians. Al- 

 though one of the sections in chapter iii. of 

 " The Origin of Species " is headed " Struggle for 

 Life most Severe between Individuals and Varieties 

 of the same Species," the evidence given hardly 

 justifies the title, and, in any case, another section 

 is headed " The Term, Struggle for Existence, used 

 in a Large Sense." In writing to Hooker in 1856, 

 he said : " The slight differences selected, by which 

 a race or species is at last formed, stand in a far 

 more important relation to its associates than to 

 external conditions " ; but there are many passages 

 in " The Origin of Species " which express the 

 view that the struggle for existence as the method 

 of Nature's sifting includes very much more than 

 internecine competition between fellows. "I should 

 premise," he says, " that I use this term [" struggle 

 for existence "] in a large and metaphorical sense, 

 including dependence of one being on another, 

 and including (which is more important) not only 

 the life of the individual, but success in leaving 

 progeny." 



1 The same view is expressed by Haeckel and Ray Lankester, 

 but I am glad to find that, in his scholarly and judicial " Handbook 

 of Darwinism," Prof. L. Plate interprets Darwin's conclusions 

 and the state of affairs in nature in much the same way as I have 



