BIBTH, SLEEP, AND DEATH 99 



cient acquaintance with the facts or a far too narrow and 

 partial reading of them. The " struggle for existence " 

 is called by one of our greatest, if not our greatest modern 

 biologist, the "clash of life against its environing diffi- 

 culties and limitations." It is the response of the 

 organism to them, an expression of the will to live, an 

 " endeavour after well-being." Naturally, it takes com- 

 plex forms, some individualistic, others altruistic. 

 Sociability, for instance, actually plays a bigger part in 

 the drama of natural life than aggression. " Sympathy," 

 wrote Darwin, " will have been increased by natural 

 selection ; for those communities which included !the 

 greatest number of the most sympathetic members would 

 flourish best and rear the greatest number of offspring." 

 And does not Mr. Tollinton tend to overlook the fact that 

 the most heavily armoured are the oldest stock? 



Lastly, I demur at Mr. Tollinton's phrase " nature's 

 cruelty." Is it cruelty to eat flesh?. If so, then all 

 humanity, or nearly all, is cruel. But to kill things for 

 the necessities of existence (lex est non pcena perire] is 

 not cruelty to the healthy imagination. In nature, 

 animals kill one another in order to live, and in 999 cases 

 in every 1,000 the death of the killed is practically in- 

 stantaneous, a shock like the banging of a door, while 

 the expertry of the killer is as highly specialized as that of 

 the trooper slicing a lemon. The examples of torture 

 (viz. , genuine cruelty) are even rarer in nature than those 

 of warfare between allied species or individuals of the same 

 species. In nine cases out of ten the clamour about 

 "nature's cruelty" is a morbid sentimentalism. Mr. 

 Tollinton's is a tenth case and therefore he will not take it 

 as anything else but a desire to arrive at the truth if I 

 quote Bacon : 



" This I dare affirm in knowledge of Nature, that a little 

 natural philosophy, and the first entrance into it, doth dis- 

 pose the opinion to atheism, but on the other side, much 

 natural philosophy, and wading deep into it, will bring about 

 men's minds to religion." 



