CHAP, xvii METAPHYSICS OF NATURAL SELECTION 195 



ism and environment is one thing, the denial of such 

 relation is quite a different thing, and nothing in 

 scientific Darwinism justifies it. Darwin the biologist 

 has shown us how life may advance, build itself up, 

 differentiate itself; how fit may become fitter. He 

 has not shown us how unfit may tumble into fitness. 

 Among the postulates of his process of biological 

 evolution are numerous fit living forms. 



Organism and Organism. These, Darwin tells us, 

 have nothing to do with each other except to struggle 

 against each other. Not all creatures stand directly 

 in relations of struggle. Probably a whale and a 

 robin red breast have no influence on each other's 

 estate. But, when organisms do affect one another, 

 they do so on terms of hostility. Some species prey 

 upon others. In adjacent species, and within the 

 same species, there is (from our point of view, not 

 from theirs ; they have not consciousness to intensify 

 it), there is competition for nourishment. All of 

 them cannot survive times of scarcity or danger. 

 The weak have their chance but get weeded out. 



This statement ignores (i) animal sociability and 

 mutual help, usually, not always, between creatures of 

 the same species. Competition, it may be argued, is 

 largely a human surmise or interpretation; sociality 

 is a fact, psychical as well as physical, in animal life. 

 (2) It ignores the dependence of animals upon living 

 food of some kind. True, the relation of the eaten to 

 the eater is not one of friendship. Yet it is a highly 

 positive relation. It is not the whole truth about the 

 cosmos of life that its many species and innumerable 

 organisms are inconsistent with each other. The 

 food species does not simply struggle against the pred- 



