72 DARWINISM AND HUMAN LIFE 



worsted them or tamed them, that he has sifted 

 out the wholesome from the poisonous plants, that 

 cowering and crouching for ages, he has watched 

 the forces of nature till he has mastered their 

 secrets, that he has been to his fellows since the 

 beginning the strangest mixture of self-assertiveness 

 and sympathy, that he has kept up an age-long 

 endeavour after well-being — always at his best 

 when rowing hard against the stream. 



The formula, " struggle for existence," familiar 

 in human affairs, was used by Darwin in his 

 interpretation of organic life, and he showed that 

 we gain clearness in our outlook on animate 

 nature if we recognise there, in continual process, 

 a struggle for existence not merely analogous 

 to, but fundamentally the same as that which 

 goes on in human life. He projected on organic 

 hfe a sociological idea, and showed that it fitted. 

 But while he thus vindicated the relevancy and 

 utihty of the sociological idea within the biological 

 realm, he declared explicitly that the phrase 

 " struggle for existence " was meant to be a 

 shorthand formula,' summing up a vast variety 

 of strife and endeavour, of thrust and parry, of 

 action and reaction. The idea has been better 

 realised by naturalists than by the severer labora- 

 tory speciaUsts. " It was certainly no chance," 

 Weismann says, " that the struggle for exist- 

 ence first revealed itself to men who had spent 

 the greater part of their lives in the open air." 

 Similarly, Prof. Poulton suggests that the main 

 reason why Huxley never appreciated the theory 



1 " For words are ■wise men's counters — they do but reckon by 

 them ; but they are the money of fools." Hobbes, " Leviathan," 

 Pt. L ch. iy. 



