314 THE ISSUES OF LIFE 



hunting and being hunted, much devouring and being de- 

 voured, that is only one side of the picture. 



Outside the struggle for existence in the strict sense there 

 is undeniably a large amount of established self-preservative 

 routine, but there is at least an equally large amount of 

 established race-preservative routine. Our total impression 

 must do justice to both sets of facts. And within the bounds 

 of the struggle for existence in the strict sense there are 

 many modes, some not strictly competitive at all. The 

 struggle which Nietzsche saw in Nature and condescended 

 to approve of, was not a scramble of starvelings around the 

 platter of subsistence, but the elbowing and jostling of 

 masterful individualities; and we maintain that much of 

 this quality of insurgence is familiar to the field naturalist. 

 But apart from elbowing and jostling, and apart from in- 

 ternecine competition and sanguinary combats, there is much 

 of the struggle for existence which might often be quite 

 accurately called the endeavour after well-being, and much, 

 as Darwin emphasised, which may be described as self-sub- 

 ordinating experiment and effort to secure the success of 

 the offspring. 



SUMMARY. 



Some students of the tactics of Animate Nature have discerned in 

 them little to admire and less to imitate. Huxley and James are 

 here in agreement. Others, such as Geddes and Kropotkin, have 

 discerned a materialised ethical process. The discrepancy is partly 

 due to focussing attention now on ' hunger ' and again on ' love ', 

 now on 'egoistic' and again on 'altruistic' activities, now on self- 

 preservation and self-increase and again on race-continuance and 

 eugenic success. Both sets of facts must be kept in view. 



The twofold business of living creatures is caring for self and 

 caring for others. Hunger and love, in the widest sense, form the 

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

 fying these imperious primal impulses the organism encounters 



