THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE 263 



gress is to make sure that they comprehend in all 

 its richness the infinity of the gift this sacrifice has 

 purchased for humanity. The end of the Struggle 

 for Life is not battle ; it is not even victory, it is 

 evolution. The result is not wounds, it is health. 

 Nature is a vast and complicated system of devices 

 to keep things changing, adjusting, and, as it seems, 

 progressing. The Struggle for Life is a species of 

 necessitated aspiration, the vis a tergo which keeps 

 living things in motion. It does not follow, of 

 course, that that motion should be upward ; that is 

 dependent on other considerations. But the point 

 to mark is, that without the struggle for food and 

 the pressure of want, without the conflict with foes 

 and the challenge of climate, the world would be 

 left to stagnation. Change, adventure, temptation, 

 vicissitude even to the verge of calamity, these are 

 the life of the world. 



There is another side to this principle from which 

 its higher significance becomes still more apparent. 

 It follows from the Struggle for Life that those 

 animals which struggle most successfully will pros- 

 per, while the less successful will disappear — hence 

 the well-known principle of Natural Selection or 

 the Survival of the Fittest. Waiving the discussion 

 of this law in general, and the varying meanings 

 which " fitness " assumes as we rise in the scale of 



