THE DRAMA OF LIFE 5 



particular excellences have in any way passed into those 

 who continue the march, except in the very indirect sense, 

 perhaps, that Man, for instance, is the stronger because of 

 his early antagonists like the Cave Lion and the Cave Bear, 

 who have long since ceased to be. 



In the history of life we may recognize, with Bergson, 

 three main lines of evolution. (I) There is the vegetative 

 line, followed by plants, and in great measure by such 

 animals as hydroids and corals. (II) There is the in- 

 stinctive line, followed especially by the chitin-clad small- 

 brained Arthropods (Crustaceans, Insects, Spiders, and the 

 like). (Ill) There is the intelligent line, followed more 

 especially by the Vertebrates, where an internal skeleton 

 of bone usually takes the place of the Arthropod's external 

 skeleton of chitin, and where the cerebral part of the 

 nervous system attains high development. A Calif ornian 

 Big Tree, two thousand years old, may represent the 

 climax of I ; an ant the climax of II ; and a man the 

 climax of III. 



Primal Impulses. What in this world-fugue is the 

 subject and what the counter-subject ? There can be 

 little doubt that the answer must be Hunger and Love. 

 These are the two primal impulses. 



Warum strebt sich das Volk so, und schreiet ? 

 Es will sich nahren, Kinder zeugen, und sie ernahren so gut 

 es vermag. 



These words ' hunger ' and ' love ' must not indeed be 

 used woodenly ; they correspond to self-preservation and 

 race-continuance, to self-regarding and other-regarding, 

 to nutrition and reproduction, to self-increase and self- 

 multiplication, to feeding and flowering, and so on. It is 



