292 THE ISSUES OF LIFE 



merit is capricious, unpredictable, combative. On the one 

 hand, we see the Environment acting upon the organism, 

 burning it and stoking it, heating it and cooling it, quicken- 

 ing it and slowing it, moistening it and drying it, provoking 

 it and quieting it, nurturing it and killing it, cradling it 

 and burying it. On the other hand, we see the Organism 

 responding to the environment, operating on it, changing it; 

 thrusting as well as parrying; defying it, mastering it, and 

 using it; even selecting it. Now the business of life is the 

 continual adjustment of this twofold relation. But when 

 we look more closely into the effective, regulated, self-asser- 

 tive, self-expressive, insurgent activity which we call ' life ', 

 we see that it takes two main directions caring for self 

 and caring for others. That is the twofold business of life 

 which all pursue, the half-awake plant, the dreamy coral, 

 the instinctive ant, the intelligent beaver, and rational man. 

 The imperious primal impulses are ' Hunger ' and ' Love ', 

 the subject and counter-subject of the great fugue of life. 

 " Why do the people strive and cry ? " the poet asked, 

 and gave the lasting answer : " They will have food and 

 they will have children, and they will bring them up as 

 best they can." So is it through the realm of organisms. 

 Of course the words ' hunger ' and ' love ' must not be used 

 woodenly; they correspond to self-preservation and race-con- 

 tinuance, to self-regarding and other-regarding, to feeding 

 and flowering, to nutrition and reproduction, to self-increase 

 and self-multiplication. We may not be inclined to speak 

 as Erasmus Darwin did of the " Loves of the Plants " , but 

 it is sound science to emphasise the fact that, rich as plants 

 are in adaptations which secure food, they are not less rich 

 in adaptations which secure the nurture and dispersal and 

 development of their offspring. 



