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92 The Study of Animal Life part i 



spring are continuous in nature with their parents ; the 

 family has a unity though its members be discontinuous 

 and scattered ; " the race is one and the individual many." 

 9. Advantages of Social Life. — But animals are social, 

 not only because they love one another, but also because 

 sociahty is justified of her children. " The world is the 

 abode of the strong," but it is also the home of the loving ; 

 " contention is the vital force," but the struggle is modified 

 and ennobled by sociality. 



(a) Darwin's Position. — Darwin observed that " the 

 individuals which took the greatest pleasure in society 

 would best escape various dangers ; while those that 

 cared least for their comrades, and lived solitary, would 

 perish in greater numbers." He distinctly emphasised 

 that- the phrase "the struggle for existence" was to be 

 used in a wide and metaphorical sense — to include all the 

 endeavours which animals make both selfishly and un- 

 selfishly to strengthen their foothold and that of their 

 ofTspring. But he was not always successful in retaining 

 this broad view, nor was he led to compute with sufficient 

 care to what extent mutual aid is a factor in evolution 

 counteractive of individualistic struggle. 



Without losing sight of the reality of the struggle for 

 existence ; without disputing the importance of natural 

 selection as a condition of evolution — securing that the 

 relatively fittest changes succeed ; without ignoring what 

 seems almost a truism, that love and social sympathies have 

 also been fostered in the course of natural selection ; we 

 maintain — (i) that many of the greatest steps of progress 

 — such as those involved in the existence of many- celled 

 animals, loving mates, family life, mammalian motherhood, 

 and societies — were not made by the natural selection of 

 indefinite variations ; (2) that affection, co-operation, mutual 

 helpfulness, sociality, have modified the struggle for material 

 subsistence by lessening its intensity and by ennobling its 

 character. 



(b) Kropotkine's Position. — Against Prof. Huxley's con- 

 clusion that " Life was a continual free- fight, and beyond 

 the limited and temporary relations of the family the 



