THE STRUGGLE FOB THE LIFE OF OTHF.DS. 243 



meant the transference of the fertilizing pollen dust 

 from the one to the other. 



Now consider, in this far-away province of the 

 vegetable kingdom, the strangeness of this phenom- 

 enon. Here are two trees living wholly different 

 lives, they are separated by miles of desert sand ; 

 they are unconscious of one another's existence ; and 

 yet they are so linked together that their separation 

 into two is a mere illusion. Physiologically they are 

 one tree ; they cannot dwell apart. It is nothing to 

 the point that they are neither dowered with locomo 

 tion nor the power of conscious choice. The point 

 is that there is that in Nature which unites these 

 seemingly disunited things, which effects combina- 

 tions and co-operations where one would least believe 

 them possible, which sustains by arrangements of the 

 most elaborate kind inter-relations between tree and 

 tree. By a device the most subtle of all that guard 

 the higher Evolution of the world the device of Sex 

 Nature accomplishes this task of throwing irre- 

 sistible bonds around widely separate things, and 

 establishing such sympathies between them that 

 they must act together or forfeit the very life of 

 their kind. Sex is a paradox ; it is that which sepa- 

 rates in order to unite. The same mysterious mesh 

 which Nature threw over the two separate palms, she 

 threw over the few and scattered units which were to 

 form the nucleus of Mankind. 



Picture the state of primitive Man ; his fear of 

 other primitive Men ; his hatred of them ; his un- 

 sociability ; his isolation ; and think how great a 

 thing was done by Sex in merely starting the crystal- 

 lization of humanity. At no period, indeed, was Man 



