40 DARWINISM chap, ii 



is heartrending. We have a horror of all violent and sudden 

 death, because we think of the life full of promise cut short, 

 of hopes and expectations unfulfilled, and of the grief of 

 mourning relatives. But all this is quite out of place in the 

 case of animals, for whom a violent and a sudden death is in 

 every way the "best. Thus the poet's picture of 



' ' Nature red in tooth and claw 

 With ravine " 



is a picture the evil of which is read into it by our 

 imaginations, the reality being made up of full and happy 

 lives, usually terminated by the quickest and least painful of 

 deaths. 



On the whole, then, we conclude that the popular idea of 

 the struggle for existence entailing misery and pain on the 

 animal world is the very reverse of the truth. What it 

 really brings about, is, the maximum of life and of the enjoy- 

 ment of life with the minimum of suffering and pain. Given 

 the necessity of death and reproduction — and without these 

 there could have been no progressive development of the 

 organic world, — and it is difficult even to imagine a system 

 by which a greater balance of happiness could have been 

 secured. And this view was evidently that of Darwin himself, 

 who thus concludes his chapter on the struggle for existence : 

 " When we reflect on this struggle, we may console ourselves 

 with the full belief that the war of nature is not incessant, 

 that no fear is felt, that death is generally prompt, and that 

 the vigorous, the healthy, and the happy survive and 

 multiply." 



