MISSING FACTOR IN CURRENT THEORIES 21 



is now engaged — are seen to be simply its natural 

 developments. 



The implications of the second function, Repro- 

 duction, lie further from the surface. To say that 

 Reproduction is synonymous with the Struggle 

 for the Life of Others conveys at first little 

 meaning, for the physiological aspects of the 

 function persist in the mind, and make even a 

 glimpse of its true character difficult. In two or 

 three chapters in the text, the implications of 

 this function will be explained at length, and 

 the reader who is sufficiently interested in the 

 immediate problem, or who sees that there is 

 here something to be investigated, may do well 

 to turn to these at once. Suffice it for the 

 moment to say that the physiological aspects of 

 the Struggle for the Life of Others are so over- 

 shadowed even towards the close of the Animal 

 Kingdom by the psychical and ethical that it is 

 scarcely necessary to emphasize the former at all. 

 One's first and natural association with the Struggle 

 for the Life of Others is with something done for 

 posterity — in the plant the Struggle to produce 

 seeds, in the animal to beget young. But this is 

 a preliminary which, compared with what directly 

 and indirectly rises out of it, may be almost 

 passed over. The significant note is ethical, the 



