178 The Bible of Nature 



sacrifice — should have no far-off counterpart in 

 the rest of creation. We have hinted at a posteri- 

 ori reasons for the belief that in this sense there 

 are spiritual laws in the natural world, but what 

 we have said must be followed up by reference 

 to such contributions to the subject as Kropotkin's 

 "Mutual Aid." 



It may perhaps be objected that parasitism is a 

 frequent phenomenon among animals, and has 

 Nature's sanction of survival and success. The 

 parasites are indeed legion; they attain conditions 

 of "complete material well-being"; in spite of the 

 enormous odds against them, involved in their 

 usually intricate life-histories, full of hazardous 

 vicissitudes, they hold their own. Fit for certain 

 conditions, they survive, and survive uncommonly 

 well. All this is true, but it is equally true that para- 

 sites are stamped with the stigmata of degeneracy. 



The reason why we are so much concerned with 

 getting away from an ultra-Darwinian picture of 

 Nature is not merely because it seems to us inac- 

 curate, but because the libellous conception pro- 

 jected from human society upon Nature has been 

 brought back again to society as a guide and 

 sanction of human conduct, even as an ethical and 

 political ideal. 



"The conception of the struggle for existence, 

 it has been said, comes back to the explanation of 

 human society with all the added force of its tri- 



