THE MISSING FACTOR IN CURRENT THEORIES. 13 



actor in the drama is certain. Further research has 

 only deepened the impression of the magnitude and 

 universality of this great and far-reaching law. But 

 that it is the sole or even the main agent in the 

 process of Evolution must be denied. Creation is 

 a drama, and no drama was ever put upon the 

 stage with only one actor. The Struggle for Life is 

 the " Villain " of the piece, no more ; and, like the 

 " Villain " in the play, its chief function is to re-act 

 upon the other players for higher ends. There is, in 

 point of fact, a second factor which one might venture 

 to call the Struggle for the Life of Others, which plays 

 an equally prominent part. Even in the early stages 

 of development, its contribution is as real, while in the 

 world's later progress — under the name of Altruism — 

 it assumes a sovereignty before which the earlier 

 Struggle sinks into insignificance. That this second 

 form of Struggle should all but have escaped the 

 notice of Evolutionists is the more unaccountable 

 since it arises, like the first, out of those fundamental 

 functions of living organisms which it is the main 

 business of biological science to investigate. The 

 functions discharged by all living things, plant and 

 animal, are two * in number. The first is Nutrition, 

 the second is Reproduction. The first is the basis of 

 the Struggle for Life ; the second, of the Struggle for 

 the Life of Others. These two functions run their 

 parallel course — or spiral course, for they con- 

 tinuously intertwine — from the very dawn of life. 

 They are involved in the fundamental nature of proto- 



1 There is a third function — that of Co-relation — but, to avoid 

 confusing the immediate issue, this may remain at present in the 

 background. 



