PREFACE vii 



perceive the inevitableness of a struggle for existence 

 so terrible and so universal as Darwin has described, 

 from the fact of there being more individuals pro- 

 duced than can possibly survive. In asserting such a 

 struggle to be inevitable from such a cause, Darwin 

 altogether left out of account the possibility that, in 

 order to avert so fearful a state of matters as he has 

 described, Nature might have some arrangement for 

 eliminating her excess of reproduction, without suffer- 

 ing and without internecine conflict. But to credit 

 Nature with any arrangement or plan having a bear- 

 ing upon the wellbeing of her children was opposed 

 to the first principles of Darwin's mind. He regarded 

 Nature as a blind agent uninformed by any principle 

 of intelligence or design, or rather, as the field of 

 action upon which the individual fought, in agonised 

 endeavour, its fateful struggle for death or life if 

 haply it might be found the fittest to survive. Be- 

 lieving, as I do, in a moral basis to the universe, and 

 therefore convinced that Darwin's conception of the 

 cruelty of Nature to her sentient offspring is wholly 

 mistaken, and that she must have some principle of 

 elimination of her excessive reproduction that is in 

 harmony with a considerate regard for her offspring's 

 wellbeing and happiness, I set myself to the task of 

 discovering in what this principle of elimination con- 

 sists. Darwin supported his belief in his struggle for 

 existence by bringing forward the fact that the 

 vigorous carnivora are very prolific, and that the means 

 by which their numbers are kept within due bounds 



