30 INTRODUCTION. 



science interpret it in the light of the Struggle for the 

 Life of Others. For, in the first place, unless there 

 had been this second factor, the world could not have 

 existed. Without the Struggle for the Life of Others, 

 obviously there would have been no Others. In the 

 second place, unless there had been a Struggle for the 

 Life of Others, the Struggle for Life could not have 

 been kept up. As will be shown later the Struggle 

 for Life almost wholly supports itself on the products 

 of the Struggle for the Life of Others. In the third 

 place, without the Struggle for the Life of Others, the 

 Struggle for Life as regards its energies would have 

 died down, and failed of its whole achievement. It is 

 the ceaseless pressure produced by the exuberant fer- 

 tility of Reproduction that creates any valuable Strug- 

 gle for Life at all. The moment " Others " multiply, 

 the individual struggle becomes keen up to the dis- 

 ciplinary point. It was this, indeed — through the 

 reading of Malthus on Over-population — that sug- 

 gested to Mr. Darwin the value of the Struggle for 

 Life. The law of Over-population from that time for- 

 ward became the foundation-stone of his theory ; and 

 recent biological research has made the basis more 

 solid than ever. The Struggle for the Life of Others 

 on the plant and animal plane, in the mere work of 

 multiplying lives, is a final condition of progress. 

 Without competition there can be no fight, and with- 

 out fight there can be no victory. In other words* 

 without the Struggle for the Life of Others there can 

 be no Struggle for Life, and therefore no Evolution. 

 Finally, and all the reasons already given are frivolous 

 beside it, had there been no Altruism — Altruism in 

 the definite sense of unselfishness, sympathy, and self- 



