84 The Biological Errors 



means that he must be content with the second 

 rank instead of the first. 



« From the moment when partial death replaces 

 total death as the result of struggle we have, more- 

 over, a new element entering in, — the possibility 



^ of reversal. Thus a man who is beaten in the 

 economic struggle by a competitor may be reduced 

 from an income of $5000 a year to an income of 



' $2000 a year, but he may discover another process 

 which will enable him to regain his income of 

 $5000 or even increase it. Nothing analogous to 

 this is possible in the struggles where total death 

 takes place, as in the case of the gazelle eaten by 

 the lion or the tree cut off from the sunshine by 

 the shadow of its neighbour. The analogy of the 

 biological struggle of elimination, resulting in the 

 total death of the conquered, in which all associa- 

 tion is of course impossible, does not apply to 

 the economic struggle of human society, resulting 

 only in a diminution of vital powers, but in which 

 association still continues possible and is indeed a 

 normal condition. 



If the "social Darwinists" had wished to make 

 a true comparison between biological and social 

 phenomena, they should have compared the 

 struggles between human associations with the 

 struggles within the same organism. Here we 

 have numerous and more exact analogies. The 

 discoveries of modern physiology, made possible 

 by the perfection of the microscope, have shown 

 us that the cells of our bodies engage in a desperate 



