THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS. 217 



the most strange and checkered that the pages of 

 Nature have to record. What Love was at first, how 

 crude and sour and embryonic a thing, it is impossible 

 to conceive. But from age to age, with immeasurable 

 faith and patience, by cultivations continuously re- 

 peated, by transplantings endlessly varied, the un- 

 recognizable germ of this new fruit was husbanded to 

 its maturity, and became the tree on which humanity, 

 society, and civilization were ultimately borne. 



As the story of Evolution is usually told, Love — the 

 evolved form, as we shall see, of the Struggle for the 

 Life of Others — has not even a place. Almost the 

 whole emphasis of science has fallen upon the oppo- 

 site — the animal Struggle for Life. Hunger was early 

 seen by the naturalists to be the first and most impe- 

 rious appetite of all living things, and the course of 

 Nature came to be erroneously interpreted in terms of 

 a never-ending strife. Since there are vastly more 

 creatures born than can ever survive, since for every 

 morsel of food provided a hundred claimants appear, 

 life to an animal was described to us as one long 

 tragedy ; and Poetry, borrowing the imperfect creed, 

 pictured Nature only as a blood-red fang. Before we 

 can go on to trace the higher progress of Love itself, it 

 is necessary to correct this misconception. And no 

 words can be thrown away if they serve, in whatever 

 imperfect measure, to restore to honor what is in 

 reality the supreme factor in the Evolution of the 

 world. To interpret the whole course of Nature by 

 the Struggle for Life is as absurd as if one were to 

 define the character of St. Francis by the tempers of 

 his childhood. Worlds grow up as well as infants ; 

 their tempers change, the better nature opens out, 



