58 The Biological Errors 



who would exclude the warfare with nature from 

 the conception of struggle and confine its inter- 

 pretations to the narrow sense of battle, from the 

 hand-to-hand combat of individuals to the collec- 

 tive homicide of great wars, have not read Dar- 

 win's works, but have obtained their opinions of 

 the meaning of his terms at second hand from 

 the popularizers who have distorted his theory. 

 Darwin, who complains bitterly in his letters 

 against the misrepresentations of his ideas, ^ tried 

 to guard expressly against the misinterpretation 

 of the word "struggle" which has occurred in the 

 philosophy of force. In a section headed, "The 

 Term Struggle for Existence Used in a Large 

 Sense, " he says: 



I should premise that I use this term in a large and 

 metaphorical sense, including dependence of one being 

 on another, and including (which is more important) 

 not only the life of the individual, but success in 

 leaving progeny.^ 



He then proceeds to illustrate the term in words 

 which leave no doubt that it includes as one of 

 its most important elements the struggle against 

 the universe. Thus 



a plant on the edge of a desert is said to struggle for 

 life against the drought, though more properly it 



' In a letter to C. Lyell he wrote : 



" I am beginning to despair of ever making the majority under- 

 stand my notions ... I must be a very bad explainer." — Life 

 and Letters of Darwin, vol. ii., p. iii. 



* The Origin of Species, 6th edition, p. 56. 



