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done so he afterwards calls in the agencies I have mentioned, 

 which may be called anything except beneficent, to counteract this 

 power of increase, I cannot look upon Nature so. It involves self 

 contradiction in the Creator. It is looking at things in the wrong 

 way, beginning at the wrong end of the chain, putting the conse- 

 quent for the antecedent, and vice versa. 



Let us view it all from another point. Suppose that instead of 

 beginning with the Malthusian " tendency," we start with the fact 

 (as fact it is), that a small proportion of either seeds, young plants 

 or the young of animals come to maturity, and ask ourselves how 

 the species can ever be kept up. I mean thit instead of imagining 

 those destructive agencies to be the consequence of great fecundity, 

 we may, I think, look on the Malthusian "tendency" as a provi- 

 sion against the evil results (at least they appear evil to us) of the 

 destructive agencies. I think we have quite as much right to 

 regard Nature from this point of view as from the other, and the 

 mind does not so readily revolt from it. 



It is a great fact that plants have not only to reproduce their 

 kind, but to serve as food for animals. Also that one class of 

 animals have to serve as food for another, as well as to preserve 

 their own species. Just as man has a work to do in the world 

 among his fellow men and among his fellow animals, so the lower 

 animals and the plants were created for other purposes besides that 

 of reproducing their kind. The seeds of plants are used not only 

 as germs of future plants but as food for hosts of animals ; and 

 even when regarded only in the reproductive light, we must 

 remember what a large proportion decay without ever performing 

 their allotted function. Darwin himself occasionally takes the 

 view I am advancing, "A large number of eggs," he says, "is of 

 some importance to those species which depend on a fluctuating 

 amount of food, for it allows them rapidly to increase in number. 

 But the real importance of a large number of eggs or seeds is to 

 make up for much destruction at some period of life. ... If 

 many eggs or young are destroyed, many must be produced, or the 

 species must become extinct." I cannot help thinking it preferable 

 that, instead of asking why all this destruction ? and answering by 

 the fecundity of plants and animals, we should ask the question, 

 Why is nature so prolific, so bountiful ? Why do fishes yield their 

 eggs by millions, and flowers their seeds by thousands ? Is it not 

 because they are made subservient to other purposes besides repro- 

 duction ? And because each does not get its fair chance in the 

 world of life, does not even enter on the struggle for existence ? 

 It may fall as a seed by the wayside, it may serve as food for other 

 creatures. Whenever herrings lay their eggs the flat fishes con- 

 gregate and devour them by thousands, and get thereby in their 



