190 THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE. 



Ascent of Man was to get him started on his upward 

 path. It was not enough for Nature to equip him 

 with a body, and plant his foot on the lowest rung of 

 the ladder. She must introduce into her economy 

 some great principle which should secure, not for him 

 alone but for every living thing, that they should work 

 upward toward the top. The inertia of things is such 

 that without compulsion they will never move. And 

 so admirably has this compulsion been applied that its 

 forces are hidden in the very nature of life itself the 

 very act of living contains within it the principles of 

 progress. An animal cannot be without becoming. 



The first great principle into the hands of which 

 this mighty charge was given is the Struggle for Life. 

 It is one of the chief keys for unlocking the mystery 

 of Man's Ascent, and so important in all development 

 that Mr. Darwin assigns it the supreme rank among 

 the factors in Evolution. " Unless," he says, " it be 

 thoroughly engrained in the mind, the whole economy 

 of Nature, with every fact on distribution, rarity, 

 abundance, extinction, and variation, will be dimly 

 seen or quite misunderstood." How, under the press- 

 ures of this great necessity to work for a living, the 

 Ascent of Man has gone on, we have now to inquire. 

 Though not to the extent that is usually supposed, yet 

 in part under this stimulus, he has slowly emerged 

 from the brute-existence, and, entering a path where 

 the possibilities of development are infinite, has been 

 pushed on from stage to stage, without premedita- 

 tion, or design, or thought on his part, until he 

 arrived at that further height where, to the uncon- 

 scious compulsions of a lower environment, there 

 were added those high incitements of conscious 



