--change it from a barren moor into a rich hay-field, by copying
the laws of Madam How, and making grass compete against heath. But you
look thoughtful: what is it you want to know?

Why, you say all living things must fight and scramble for what they can
get from each other: and must not I too? For I am a living thing.

Ah, that is the old question, which our Lord answered long ago, and said,
"Be not anxious what ye shall eat or what ye shall drink, or wherewithal
you shall be clothed. For after all these things do the heathen seek,
and your Heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of these things. But
seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these
things shall be added to you." A few, very few, people have taken that
advice. But they have been just the salt of the earth, which has kept
mankind from decaying.

But what has that to do with it?

See. You are a living thing, you say. Are you a plant?

No.

Are you an animal?

I do not know. Yes. I suppose I am. I eat, and drink, and sleep, just
as dogs and cats do.

Yes. There is no denying that. No one knew that better than St. Paul
when he told men that they had a flesh; that is, a body, and an animal's
nature in them. But St. Paul told them--of course he was not the first
to say so, for all the wise heathens have known that--that there was
something more in us, which he called a spirit. Some call it now the
moral sentiment, some one thing, some another, but we will keep to the
old word: we shall not find a better.

Yes, I know that I have a spirit, a soul.

Better to say that you are a spirit. But what does St. Paul say? That
our spirit is to conquer our flesh, and keep it down. That the man in
us, in short, which is made in the likeness of God, is to conquer the
animal in us, which is made in the likeness of the dog and the cat, and
sometimes (I fear) in the likeness of the ape or the pig. You would not
wish to be like a cat, much less like an ape or a pig?

Of course not.

Then do not copy them, by competing and struggling for existence against
other people.

What do you mean?

Did you never watch the pigs feeding?

Yes, and how they grudge and quarrel, and shove each other's noses out of
the trough, and even bite each other because they are so jealous which
shall get most.

That is it. And how the biggest pig drives the others away, and would
starve them while he got fat, if the man did not drive him o