Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 86.djvu/426

 material success, or a more developed capacity for obeying the law of the jungle.

The other point is this. Darwin attached great importance to the web of life, to the manifold and subtle inter-relations that bind creatures together in a vibrating systema Naturæ. One of the reasons for his emphasis was simply that he was so good a naturalist; the other reason was his discernment that survival in the struggle for existence is definitely related to the already established system of linkages, to all sorts of interdependences and solidarities. The texture of the web of life is so fine that even an apparently trivial new quality may be vital to the situation. For man this is of the utmost importance, that selection has a definite reference to the established system of relations. In other words, man does to a large extent make his own sieves.

A broad survey of the realm of organisms shows that a very large proportion of time and energy is given over to activities which are not greatly, if at all, to the advantage of the individual. Borne on by impulses and instincts as imperious as hunger and thirst, how many animals spend themselves for their race. It is their meat and drink to do so, and Nature takes advantage of their capacity for self-forgetfulness. In some types it seems almost extreme, as Cresson says:

In Goethe’s words,

The continuance of the race is often very costly or even fatal to the parent, and there is exhaustion of energies in securing the safety and sustenance of the young. It is a great fact of Organic Nature that while competitive individualism pays up to a certain point, survival and success are also to those types in which the individual has been more or less subordinated to the welfare of the species. Part of their fitness is in being capable of self-sacrifice. This is part of Nature’s strategy which man has not adequately appreciated.

Thus we can not accept the caricature of Nature as in a state of universal Hobbesian warfare, each against all, and no discharge for any. That is only one aspect of the struggle for existence, and the subordination of the individual to the species is another. Especially among the finer forms of life do we find that the answer-back which is given to the environing limitations is less and less frequently an intensification of competition, is more and more frequently something subtler, some parental sacrifice, some cooperative device, some experiment in sociality. The improbability of war being the saving grace of human history grows upon us.