216 THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS. 



" For the loving worm within its clod 

 Were diviner than a loveless God." 



That Love did not come down to us through the 

 Struggle for Life, the only great factor in Evolution 

 which up to this time has been dwelt upon, is self-evi- 

 dent. It has a lineage all its own. Yet inexplicable 

 though the circumstance be, the history of this force, 

 the most stupendous the world has ever known, has 

 scarcely even begun to be investigated. Every other 

 principle in Nature has had a thousand prophets ; but 

 this supreme dynamic has run its course through the 

 ages unobserved ; its rise, so far as science is con- 

 cerned, is unknown; its story lias never been told. 

 But if any phenomenon or principle in Nature is capa- 

 ble of treatment under the category of Evolution, this 

 is. Love is not a late arrival, an after-thought, with 

 Creation. It is not a novelty of a romantic civiliza- 

 tion. It is not a pious word of religion. Its roots be- 

 gan to grow with the first cell of life which budded on 

 this 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 immortal word are 

 more wonderful than the story of its birth and 

 growth. Partly a product of crushed lives and exter- 

 minated 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 



