THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE 255 



continuous discipline. Some environment there must 

 always be ; and some change of environment, no 

 matter how minute, there must always be ; and 

 some change, no matter how imperceptible, must be 

 always wrought in him. 



We now see, perhaps, more clearly why Evolu- 

 tion at the dawn of life entered into league with so 

 strange an ally as Want. The Evolution of Man- 

 kind was too great a thing to entrust to any un- 

 certain hand. The advantage of attaching human 

 progress to the Struggle for Life is that you can 

 always depend upon it. Hunger never fails. All 

 other human appetites have their periods of activity 

 and stagnation ; passions wax and wane ; emotions 

 are casual and capricious. But the continuous dis- 

 charge of the function of Nutrition is interrupted 

 only by the final interruption — Death. Death 

 means, in fact, little more than an interference 

 with the function of Nutrition; it means that the 

 Struggle for Life having broken down, there can 

 be no more life, no further evolution. Hence, it 

 has been ordained that Life and Struggle, Health 

 and Struggle, Growth and Struggle, Progress and 

 Struggle, shall be linked together; that whatever 

 the chances of misdirection, the apparent losses, the 

 mysterious accompaniments of strife and pain, the 

 Ascent of Man should be bound up with living. 



