828 THE AMERICAN NATURALIST. [VoL. XXXII. 
But we have only to observe the natural course of the history 
of every organism to see that the setting up of antagonisms is 
not only the fundamental but the necessary law of organisms. 
The most strenuous struggle which occurs in the life of any 
organism is that which separates it from its closest ancestor, 
its most intimate helper, the source, at the time of the separa- 
tion, of all its good. No struggle with competitors, afterwards, 
equals in proportionate expenditure of energy this one. In the 
higher animals the term /ador has been applied to it, because 
all other labor is but a faint imitation of it. 
This greatest and universal struggle is the means of breaking 
with ancestry and setting up independence. So far as the im- 
‘mediate parent is concerned, the amount of energy expended 
in preparing for, caring for, and building up this offspring, 
which must necessarily increase and not diminish the total diffi- 
culties of living, is in excess of any other kind of energy put 
forth by the organism. And as to the offspring itself, the sep- 
aration from the parent is a departure from almost total depend- 
ence and inactivity into increasing struggle and labor. 
Thus in this process, which we are apt to associate most 
intimately with the law of heredity, is seen in operation this 
principle of doing otherwise, of departure from the bonds of 
heredity, of variation from the immediately preceding course of 
action of the individual performing the acts. It seems to us, 
as we ascend a mountain, as if the rough things in the path 
were the real hindrances to progress, but the fact is that the 
-great work of a climber is always spent in overcoming the 
gravitation which would keep him at the bottom, and adjust- 
ment to the rocks on the way of his path is an insignificant 
part of his task. So it is not so much the local impediments of 
environment as the inertia of heredity which has to be over- 
come in each step of progress of evolution. 
Malthus’s theory rests on the assumption that there are more 
applicants than there are goods ; but whether this be true or 
not, it is certainly true that the greatest kind of human success 
we know of, and the most conspicuous examples of success, are 
those cases in which hitherto useless, because unused, sources 
of good are appropriated and their value realized, and thus the 
