62 The Biological Errors 



individuals of any species, by better adapting them to 

 their altered conditions, would tend to be preserved; 

 and natural selection would have free scope for the 

 work of improvement. ^ 



The struggle against the physical universe, 

 which is so completely disregarded in the philoso- 

 phy of force, constitutes what is usually called 

 economic production. This struggle is continuous : 

 it is being waged every minute and indeed every 

 second. The disproportion between the days of 

 labour given to this struggle against the surround- 

 ings and the days of labour given to the struggle 

 between men is simply enormous. Some people 

 such as the Swedish people, for example, have 

 not had either a war with a foreign nation or a 

 civil war for a century. The number of days 

 used in combating their own kind has been o 

 during this period. But the number of days 

 devoted to the struggle against the physical en- 

 vironment, on the basis of an average working 

 population of three million people during the 

 36,500 days of the century is 109,500,000,000 at 

 least. The proportion of zero to 109 billion is 

 infinite. But Sweden has made enormous progress 

 during the nineteenth century and ranks among 

 the highest and most civilized nations in the 

 world. Yet all this progress has been made with- 

 out the aid of a single war. How can it be affirmed 

 then that collective homicide is the cause of pro- 



* The Origin of Species, pp. 69-71. 



