instances,
chiefly connected with the relations existing between insects and
flowers, the development of one species in relation to another is not
that of mutual helpfulness. The general rule here is that of mutual
injury. The carnivora prey on the herbivora and upon each other; and the
herbivora crush each other by methods that are as effective as the
method of direct attack. Any variation is "good" provided it be of
advantage to its possessor. And the "good" of the one kind may mean the
destruction of another order. All the exquisite design shown in the
development of the finer feelings of man, and upon which theistic
sentimentalists love to dwell, may be seen in the structure of those
parasites which destroy man and bring his finer feelings to naught. The
late Theodore Roosevelt says of the Brazilian forests:--

In these forests the multitude of insects that bite, sting, devour,
and prey on other creatures, often with accompaniments of atrocious
suffering, passes belief. The very pathetic myths of beneficent
nature could not deceive even the least wise being if he once saw
the iron cruelty of life in the tropics. Of course, "nature"--in
common parlance a wholly inaccurate term, by the way, especially
when used to express a single entity--is entirely ruthless, no less
so as regards types than as regards individuals, and entirely
indifferent to good or evil, and works out her ends or no ends
with utter disregard of pain and woe (Cited by E. D. Fawcett in
_The World as Imagination_; pp. 571-2).

And Mr. Carveth Reade expresses the same thing in a more elaborate
summing up:--

The merciless character of organic evolution appears to us, first,
in reckless propagation and the consequent destruction. Every
species is as prolific as it can be compatibly with the development
of its individuals; and the deaths that ensue from inanition,
disease, violence, present a stupefying scene. The best one can say
for it is that, as life rises in the organic scale, the death rate
declines. Yet even man still suffers outrageously by violence,
disease, inanition; the notion that "Malthus's Law" no longer holds
of civilised man is a foolish delusion. But more sinister than the
direct destruction of life is the spectacle of innumerable species
profiting by a life, parasitic or predatory, at the expense of
others. The pa