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and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced 
by laws acting around us.” 
Now it is necessary that we should have a clear perception of what we mean ; 
but here we are in a mist. Laws here are personified, and according to the 
sense in which they are here used, they can only have reference to the mind, 
and not merely to external nature. Mr. Darwin goes on to say : — 
“ These laws, taken in the largest sense, being growth with reproduction ; 
inheritance which is almost implied by reproduction ; variability from the 
indirect and direct actions of the external conditions of life, and from use and 
disuse ; a ratio of increase so high as to lead to a struggle for life, and as 
a consequence to natural selection, entailing divergence of character and the 
extinction of less-improved forms.” 
“ A struggle for life ” ! I can perfectly comprehend a struggle between 
men and between animals ; but except in a metaphorical sense, a struggle for 
life is not true here ; and if we go into metaphors on such a point, we shall 
soon flounder in our logic. An error of the same kind is found in the line — 
a to natural selection, entailing divergencies of character and the extinction of 
less-improved forms.” What Darwin understands by these forms is far from 
apparent to me. Let us take another instance : — 
“ Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted 
object that we are capable of conceiving — namely, the production of higher 
animals, directly follows.” 
Now I can understand that animals may have a good hearty battle 
together, but I cannot understand, as an actual thing, the fighting of plants. 
That is quite beyond my comprehension 
Mr. Reddle. — But you laiow what he means ; namely, that a plant, unless 
it happens to be of a favourable species, will have to give way to others 
better adapted to the soil or climate. The weakest have to go to the wall ; 
they are extinguished hi this “ struggle for life.” 
Rev. C. A. Row. — What I say is that this method of speaking is bad in 
logic. It is positively mischievous, when we speak of struggles which are 
applicable to men and animals only, to apply them to plants. I suppose, as 
you say, that what Darwin means is this : that when a number of plants 
overgrow each other, the weaker plants get pushed down by the stronger. 
But in no proper sense of the word is that a struggle at all. I believe that 
throughout Darwin’s book, and especially in relation to the term “law,” 
there is an endless personification, as though laws were actual living ideas, 
capable of energizing. That is bad in logic. Then the expression “ breathed 
into,” which is used in the next page, belongs to the same category. So far 
as Darwin’s new theory is concerned, it does not largely differ from what was 
written before the Christian era by Lucretius, who makes various assertions 
in relation to the same matter ; but it would take too long to go into that 
question. On the whole, Lucretius has some advantage over Mr. Darwin, 
because he admits variety in atoms. Professor Kirk says on page 16 
