BACKGROUND OF DARWINISM—THE WEB OF LIFE 207 
that the various parts are more than mutually dependent, that they 
are in some measure co-ordinated, making larger systems workable. 
What the metaphor of “‘the web of life’ suggests We may use 
the metaphor “web of life” in two ways. On the one hand, Nature 
has a woven pattern which science seeks to read, each science following 
the threads of a particular colour. There is a warp and woof in this 
web, which to the zodlogist usually appear as “hunger” and “love.” 
There is a changing pattern in the web, becoming more complex as the 
ages pass; and this is evolution. . But the essential idea of a web is that 
of interlinking and ramifying. We can never tell where a thread will 
lead to. If one be pulled out, many are loosened. This is true of 
Nature through and through. 
The phrase “web of life” suggests another picture—the web of a 
spider—often an intricate system, with part delicately bound to part 
so that the whole system is made one. ‘The quivering fly entangled 
in a corner betrays itself throughout the web; often it is felt rather 
than seen by the lurking spinner. So in the substantial fabric of the 
world part is bound to part. In wind and weather, or in the business 
of our life, we are daily made aware of results whose first conditions are 
very remote; and chains of influence, not difficult to demonstrate, 
link man to beast, and flower to insect. The more we know of our 
surroundings the more we realise that nature is a vast system of link- 
ages, that isolation is impossible.” 
Dependence of living creatures on their surroundings.—We do 
not know what life in principle is, but we may describe living as action 
and reaction between organisms and their environment. This is the 
fundamental relation—the dependence of living creatures on appro- 
priate surroundings, and the primary illustrations of linkages must be 
found here. The living creatures are real, just in the same sense as the 
surroundings are real; but it is plain that we cannot abstract the living 
creatures from their surroundings. When we try to do this they die— 
even in our thought of them, and our biology is only necrology. 
Huxley compared a living creature to a whirlpool in a river; it isalways 
changing, yet always apparently the same; matter and energy stream 
in and stream out; the whirlpool has an individuality and a certain 
unity, yet it is wholly dependent upon the surrounding currents. One 
may push the whirlpool metaphor too far, so as to give a false sim- 
plicity to the facts, for when vital whirlpools began to be there also 
emerged what cannot be discerned in crystal or dewdrop—the will to 
live, a capacity of persistent experience, and the power of giving rise to 
