g6 CHARLES DARWIN 



analogy may help to make this difficult principle a little 

 clearer. The baker does not fear the competition of 

 the butcher in the struggle for life : it is the competi- 

 tion of the other bakers that sometimes inexorably 

 crushes him out of existence. The lawyer does not 

 press hard upon the doctor, nor the architect upon the 

 journeyman painter. A war in the Soudan or in South 

 Africa is far less fatal to the workman in our great towns 

 than the ceaseless competition of his fellow-workmen. 

 It is not the soldier that kills the artisan, but the num- 

 ber of other artisans who undersell him and crowd to 

 fill up every vacant position. In this way the great 

 enemies of the individual herbivore are not the carnivores, 

 but the other herbivores. The lion eats the antelope, 

 to be sure ; but the real struggle lies between lion and 

 lion for a fair share of meat, or between antelope and 

 antelope for a fair share of pasturage. Homo homini 

 lupus, says the old proverb, and so, we may add, in a 

 wider sense, lupus lupo lupus, also. Of course, the 

 carnivore plays a great part in the selective process ; 

 but he is the selector only ; the real competition is be- 

 tween the selected. Now, let us take the case of the 

 plant. A thousand seedlings occupy the space where 

 few alone can ultimately grow ; and between these 

 seedlings the struggle is fierce, the strongest and best 

 adapted ultimately surviving. To take Darwin's own 

 example, the mistletoe, which is a parasite, cannot truly 

 be said to struggle with the apple tree on which it 

 fastens ; for if too many parasites cover a tree, it 

 perishes, and so they kill themselves as well as their 

 host, all alike dying together. But several seedling 

 mistletoes growing together on the same branch may 



