92 The Morality of Nature 



at all, between short life or non-being, it can only be sup- 

 posed that their greater happiness is in life. But beyond this 

 mere brief enjoyment of a short life, they fulfilled a greater 

 mission, even the rejected ones. The clan or family was put 

 into possession of selected sires and dams not of chance 

 quality, but the pick of all this great number. Had the 

 selection been made by nature, in preferring those best for 

 a wild life, the process would have been essentially the same 

 as that instituted by man, preferring those suited to a tame 

 life. Man is thus seen after all as only part of the hostile 

 environment of nature as regarded by these individuals. His 

 action in disregard of animal life and death does only a 

 fragment of what nature does, in her normal development of 

 all creatures, as man is a fragment indeed of nature. 



And observe the appearance of the larger conduct unit, 

 the race life of the stock, which, responding to this environ- 

 ment, flows exuberantly to supply the demand, accepting the 

 offer of great numbers of short lives as readily as in other 

 cases the offer of small number of longer lives. 



In the case of those creatures desired not for food but for 

 special qualifications, as the horse for speed, or the dog for 

 hunting capacity, the rejection of a few in the earlier genera- 

 tions serves to establish the many that follow in a fitness 

 which gives them immunity. The race loses a few members 

 to exterminate an undesirable strain or quality; if these had 

 survived their progeny would have diluted the quality of the 

 stock even more than their numbers strengthened it ; and man 

 would no longer foster them as a race. After their rejection 

 every birth to the stock becomes valuable. Clearly the re- 

 moval of those members was not a loss to the race but a gain. 



