310 THE ISSUES OF LIFE 



Darwin's * metaphorical phrase ', the struggle for existence, 

 in any sense that would make it a justification of war be- 

 tween nations. It is my business just now to refute a mis- 

 conception of the struggle rather than to explain what it is. 

 But, if the latter were my task, I could adduce from the 

 writings of Darwin himself, and from those of later natu- 

 ralists, a thousand instances taken from the Animal King- 

 dom in which success has come about by means analogous 

 with the cultivation of all the peaceful arts, the raising 

 of the intelligence, and the heightening of the emotions 

 of love and pity " (1915, p. 41). 



Second, in spite of the one hundred and fifty definitions 

 of war, we may venture to regard the essence of it as an 

 organised flesh and blood struggle between communities or 

 nationalities, and if this be so its analogue is to be looked 

 for in the quite exceptional group-competition which some- 

 times occurs among some social insects, notably among ants, 

 and not in the competitive forms of the struggle which may 

 occur between individual animals of the same species. 



Third, as Dr. Chalmers Mitchell points out, the fallacious 

 comparison between human warfare and the struggle for 

 existence breaks down because " modern nations are not 

 units of the same order as the units of the animal and 

 vegetable kingdom" (p. 108). Nationalities "differ from 

 the units of zoology and botany in that the individuals 

 composing them are not united by blood-relationship. Even 

 if the struggle for existence were the sole law that had shaped 

 and trimmed the tree of life, it does not necessarily apply 

 to the political communities of men, for these cohere not 

 because of common descent but because of bonds that are 

 peculiar to the human race" (p. 64). 



The appeal to human history, which the militarists make 



