Ill 



THE MASTER INSTINCT 



FROM the naturalist's point of view, the sole 

 purpose of all forms of life in this world, man 

 included, is to beget more life, and secure the per- 

 petuity of the species. The master instinct in every 

 living creature is to increase and multiply and fill 

 the world with its progeny. Our dream that every 

 living thing was made to serve some namable pur- 

 pose apart from itself, or was designed in some way 

 to serve man, is a notion that has survived from the 

 childhood of the race. 



Many forms, in both the animal and the vegetable 

 worlds, are the enemies of man and the enemies of 

 one another. Other forms play into one another's 

 hands, but only to help forward the scheme of prop- 

 agation of one or both sides, as when vines and trees 

 incase their seeds in tempting fruit-pulps which the 

 animals eat and thus drop the undigested germs far 

 and near. All our fruits, from the apple down to the 

 wild berries, are plotting to get their seeds scattered 

 and planted, and they offer edible morsels as a wage 

 to any creature that will perform this service. In 

 many cases the wage is a very small one, as with the 

 red cedar, the hardback (Celtis), the sumac, the 

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