THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS 277 



earth. How great it is the history of humanity 

 bears witness ; but how old it is and how solid, 

 how bound up with the very constitution of the 

 world, how from the first of time an eternal part of 

 it, we are only now beginning to perceive. For the 

 Evolution of Love is a piece of pure Science. Love 

 did not descend out of the clouds like rain or snow. 

 It was distilled on earth. And few of the romances 

 which in after years were to cluster round this im- 

 mortal word are more wonderful than the story of 

 its birth and growth. Partly a product of crushed 

 lives and exterminated species, and partly of the 

 choicest blossoms and sweetest essences that ever 

 came from the tree of life, it reached its spiritual 

 perfection after a history the most strange and 

 chequered that the pages of Nature have to 

 record. What Love was at first, how crude and 

 sour and embryonic a thing, it is impossible to 

 conceive. But from age to age, with immeasurable 

 faith and patience, by cultivations continuously re- 

 peated, by transplantings endlessly varied, the un- 

 recognizable germ of this new fruit was husbanded 

 to its maturity, and became the tree on which 

 humanity, society, and civilization were ultimately 

 borne. 



As the story of Evolution is usually told, Love — 

 the evolved form, as we shall see, of the Struggle 



