ffering in the same way as the slaughter of an
individual. It is plain that this is not a necessary, though it may
sometimes be the actual result. A corporation may be suppressed without
injury to its members. Every individual will die before long, struggle
or no struggle. If the rate of reproduction fails to keep up with the
rate of extinction, the species must diminish. But this might happen
without any increase of suffering. If the boys in a district discovered
how to take birds' eggs, they might soon extirpate a species; but it
does not follow that the birds would individually suffer. Perhaps they
would feel themselves relieved from a disagreeable responsibility. The
process by which a species is improved, the dying out of the least fit,
implies no more suffering than we know to exist independently of any
doctrine as to a struggle. When we use anthropomorphic language, we may
speak of "self-assertion". But "self-assertion," minus the
anthropomorphism, means self-preservation; and that is merely a way of
describing the fact that an animal or plant which is well adapted to
its conditions of life is more likely to live than an animal which is
ill-adapted. I have some difficulty in imagining how any other
arrangement can even be supposed possible. It seems to be almost an
identical proposition that the healthiest and strongest will generally
live longest; and the conception of a "struggle for existence" only
enables us to understand how this results in certain progressive
modifications of the species. If we could ever for a moment have
fancied that there was no pain and disease, and that some beings were
not more liable than others to those evils, I might admit that the new
doctrine has made the world darker. As it is, it seems to me that it
leaves the data just what they were before, and only shows us that they
have certain previously unsuspected bearings upon the history of the
world.

One other point must be mentioned. Not only are species interdependent
as well as partly in competition, but there is an absolute dependence
in all the higher species between its different members which may be
said to imply a _de facto_ altruism, as the dependence upon other
species implies a _de facto_ co-operation. Every animal, to say
nothing else, is absolutely dependent for a considerable part of its
existence upon its parents. The young bird or beast could not grow up
unless its mother took care of it for a certain period. There i