208 TIIE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE. 



if any self-acting law can bring this about, though its 

 bearing upon this or that individual case may seem 

 unjust, its necessity for the world as a whole is vindi- 

 cated. If more of any given species are born into the 

 world than can possibly find food, and if a given num- 

 ber must die, that number must be singled out upon 

 some principle; and we cannot quarrel with the 

 principle in Physical Nature which condemns to death 

 the worst. By placing the death-penalty upon the 

 slightest short-coming, Natural Selection so discour- 

 ages imperfection as practically to eliminate it from 

 the world. The fact that any given animal is alive 

 at all is almost a token of its perfectness. Nothing 

 living can be wholly a failure. For the moment that 

 it fails, it ceases to live. Something more fit, were it 

 even by a hairbreadth, secures it place ; so that all 

 existing lives must, with reference to their environ- 

 ment, be the best possible lives. Natural Selection is 

 the means employed in Nature to bring about perfect 

 health, perfect wholeness, perfect adaptation, and in 

 the long run the Ascent of all living things. 



This being so, the Law of the Struggle for Life is 

 elevated to a unique place in Nature as a first neces- 

 sity of progress. It involves that every living thing 

 in nature shall live its best, that every resource shall 

 be called out to its utmost, that every individual 

 faculty shall be kept in the most perfect order and 

 work up to its fullest strength. So far from being a 

 drag on life, it is the one thing which not only makes 

 life go on at all, but which in the very act perfects it. 

 The result may sometimes involve the dethroning of a 

 species, or its entire extinction : it may lead in the 

 case of others to degeneration j but in the end it must 



