180 The Bible of Nature 



find indeed that there is often competition to the 

 death, much pain and suffering, very intense strug- 

 gle for food and foothold. We may echo Darwin's 

 sad words that the world is *'too full of misery." 

 We may say with Huxley that suffering, *'this 

 baleful product of evolution, increases in quantity 

 and in intensity with advancing grades of animal 

 organization until it attains its highest level in 

 man." But this is not all. We see the success of 

 self-sacrifice, the rewards of love, the stability of 

 societies, and no end of joie de vivre. We find 

 that the phrase struggle for existence has indeed 

 to be used in a wide and metaphorical sense, that 

 it is descriptive of the course of nature in which 

 the multiplication of organisms and the natural 

 limitations put to their desires for food, foothold, 

 comfort and mates, bring about a state of affairs 

 in which a premium is put on advantageous vari- 

 ations of whatever kind, and in which an elimina- 

 tion more rapid than natural death, or a lessening 

 of the normal number and success of the family, 

 handicaps those which are relatively unfit. 



It seems important that we should try to make 

 up our minds whether Huxley's picture of the 

 course of animate nature is adequate. Must we 

 not recognize that progress depends on much more 

 than a squabble, around the platter; that the strug- 

 gle for existence is far more than an internecine 

 struggle at the margin of subsistence, that it in- 



