428 LAWS OF MULTIPLICATION. 



between self-maintenance and maintenance of the race. All 

 motion, sensible and insensible, generated by an animal for 

 the preservation of its life, is motion liberated from decom- 

 posed nutriment — nutriment which, if not thus decomposed, 

 would have been available for reproduction; or rather — 

 might have been replaced by nutriment fitted for reproductive 

 purposes, absorbed from other kinds of food. Hence, in pro- 

 portion as the activities increase — in proportion as, by its 

 more varied, complex, rapid, and vigorous actions, an animal 

 gains power to support itself and to cope with surrounding 

 dangers, it must lose power to propagate. 



§ 327. How may this antagonism be best expressed in a 

 brief way? If self-preservation displayed itself in the 

 highest organisms, as it does in the lowest, in little else but 

 continuous growth ; and if race-preservation consisted always, 

 as it does often, of nothing beyond detachment of portions 

 from the parental mass; then the antagonism would be, 

 throughout, the obviously-necessary one of integration and 

 disintegration. Maintenance of the individual and propaga- 

 tion of the species, being respectively aggregative and sepa- 

 rative, it would be as self-evident that they vary inversely, 

 as it is self-evident that addition and subtraction undo one 

 another. But though the simplest types show us the opposi- 

 tion of self-maintenance and race-maintenance almost wholly 

 under this form; and though higher types, up to the most 

 complex, exhibit it to a great extent under this form ; yet, as 

 we have just seen, this is not its only form. The total 

 material monopolized by the individual and withheld from 

 the race, must be stated as the quantity united to form its 

 fabric, plus the quantity expended in differentiating its 

 fabric, plus the quantity expended in its self-conserving 

 actions. Similarly, the total material devoted to the race at 

 the expense of the individual, includes that which is directly 

 subtracted from the parent in the shape of egg or foetus, plus 

 that which is directly subtracted in the shape of milk, plus 



