EVOLUTION AS A NATURAL PROCESS 129 



ual contest carried on by the members of one commu- 

 nity has been done away with. It is an inexorable law 

 of nature that all living things must fight daily and 

 hourly for their very lives, because so many are brought 

 into the world with each new generation that there is 

 not sufficient room for all. No organism can escape 

 the struggle for existence except by an unconditional 

 surrender that results in death. Everywhere we turn 

 to examine the happenings of organic life we can find 

 nothing but a wearisome warfare in which it is the 

 ultimate and cruel lot of every contestant to admit 

 defeat. 



What now are the results of variation, over-multi- 

 plication, and competition? Since some must die 

 because nature cannot support all that she produces, 

 since only a small proportion of those that enter upon 

 life can find a foothold or successfully meet the hordes 

 of their enemies, which will be the ones to survive? 

 Surely those that have even the slightest advantage 

 over their fellows will live when their companions 

 perish. It is impossible that the result could be other- 

 wise; it must follow inevitably from what has been 

 described before. The whole process has its positive 

 and its negative aspects : the survival of the fittest 

 and the elimination of the unfit. Perhaps it would be 

 more correct to say the more real element is the nega- 

 tive one, for those which are least capable of meeting 

 their living foes and the decimating conditions of in- 

 organic nature are the first to die, while the others 

 will be able to prolong the struggle for a longer or 



