MISSING FACTOR IN CURRENT THEORIES 3^ 



Life of Others. In the third place, without the 

 Struggle for the Life of Others, the Struggle 

 for Life as regards its energies would have died 

 down, and failed of its whole achievement. It is 

 the ceaseless pressure produced by the exuberant 

 fertility of Reproduction that creates any valuable 

 Struggle for Life at all. The moment " Others " 

 multiply, the individual struggle becomes keen up 

 to the disciplinary point. It was this, indeed — 

 through the reading of Malthus on Over-popula- 

 tion — that suggested to Mr. Darwin the value of 

 the Struggle for Life. The law of Over-population 

 from that time forward became the foundation- 

 stone of his theory; and recent biological research 

 has made the basis more solid than ever. The 

 Struggle for the Life of Others on the plant 

 and animal plane, in the mere work of multiplying 

 lives, is a final condition of progress. Without 

 competition there can be no fight, and without 

 fight there can be no victory. In other words, 

 without the Struggle for tKe Life of Others there 

 can be no Struggle for Life, and therefore no 

 Evolution. Finally, and all the reasons already 

 given are frivolous beside it, had there been no 

 Altruism — Altruism in the definite sense of un- 

 selfishness, sympathy, and self-sacrifice for Others, 

 the whole higher world of life had perished as soon 



