GILBERT WHITE AND SELBORNE 81 



this contingency. Thus Nature, who is a great economist, con- 

 verts the recreation of one animal to the support of another ! 



Undoubtedly, this is reading the lines of the " correla- 

 tion of organisms," a vast system of interlinkages which 

 Darwin himself hardly probed to its full facts or philo- 

 sophy, but which, all the same, is the most important 

 enlightenment of Darwinism both for the future of the 

 human race and a right understanding of the universe. 

 White, too, knew something about adaptations (when 

 he describes the perfect suitability of the organs of the 

 Great Northern Diver to its needs) ; he dimly realized 

 that " hunger and love " were the two great motive 

 and mobile forces of nature's system ; he understood 

 that birds do not increase in spite of their prolificacy 

 (if he had gone a step further and asked himself why, 

 he might have strode a hundred years) ; he declared 

 that " there is a wonderful spirit of sociality in the 

 brute creation," which is a throw-forward to Kropotkin's 

 Mutual Aid ; and there are other examples. 



Nor is it true to say that White's vision of the natural 

 world, as on the whole a kind and smiling abode for 

 happy beings, was a virtue of temperament rather than 

 a reflection of knowledge. Knowledge is useless and a 

 curse to mankind and all life unless it be rightly inter- 

 preted, and because we have put the accent on the 

 wrong word — on the " struggle " rather than the " ex- 

 istence," and again on Malthusian rather than actual 

 Nature — we have no right whatever to blame White 

 because he put his accent on the " existence," knowing 

 very little of whence it came and whither it goes. The 

 theory of incarnadined Nature's predacity, mercilessness 

 and predominance of brutal force, has done uncountable 

 havoc and mischief in the world by presenting man 

 with a moral certificate for his own rapacious exploita- 

 tions ; and if White regarded the face of natural life 

 with a delight and love which lit it up and seemed to 

 him to emanate from it, it may be that our further 

 knowledge will (as it is already beginning to) corrobo- 

 rate what he divined and saw rather than knew. If 

 he knew little of the origin and growth of natural life, 



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