night, dropped his watch." It gave him no concern; he was sure a bizcacha would find it for him in the morning, as actually happened! "The only fact which I know analogous," says Mr. Darwin (p. 125), "is the habit of the Australian Calodera maculata, which makes an elegant vaulted passage of twigs for playing in, collecting near the spot shells, bones, and the feathers of birds: the natives, when they lose any hard object, search the playing passages, and even a tobacco pipe has been known to be thus recovered." Drawings of this bower-bird, there called the Chlamydera maculata, "with bower," are to be seen at p. 382 of the Descent of Man, where the details of the description are at much greater length. Mr. Darwin's remarks, partly seen already, in regard to extinction (p. 175), may be put as a general conclusion on this whole side of the subject:

The supply of We are unable to

"We do not steadily bear in mind, how profoundly ignorant we are of the conditions of existence of every animal; nor do we always remember that some check is constantly preventing the too rapid increase of every organised being left in a state of nature. food, on an average, remains constant. tell the precise nature of the check. If, then, the too rapid increase of every species, even the most favoured, is steadily checked, as we must admit, though how and when it is hard to say-and if we see, though unable to assign the precise reason, one species abundant and another closely allied species rare in the same districtto admit all this, and yet to call in some extraordinary agent and to marvel greatly when a species ceases to exist, appears to me much the same as to admit that sickness in the individual is the prelude to deathto feel no surprise at sickness-but when the sick man dies, to wonder, and to believe that he died through violence."

The supply of food Mr. Darwin admits to remain constant; and its stomach being full, it is not easy to suppose much fight in an animal. "If asked how this is" (ie. referring to what has been just quoted), one immediately replies that it is determined by some slight difference in climate, food, or the number of the enemies: yet how rarely, if ever, we can point out the precise cause and manner of action of the check." Mr. Darwin here pretty well slumps up the struggle with the conditions which are always as good as inexistent for him; nor anywhere else that I know of does it (the struggle) ever reappear in the Journal less faint or less casual-if indeed ever at all. That it was no more than an afterthought only following the reading of Malthus will force itself in! The most convincing chapter of the Journal, however, is that which concerns the Galapagos (see my last Gifford Lecture, in which they are discussed at full).

Krause's book, as we have seen, is luminous in a quite multiple Darwinian endorsement. Now no man is more minded than Krause to take the general truth for granted of a balance of life being made good in nature. It is as

in reference to this that he says, "Moreover, plants are able to protect themselves from complete destruction." If plants, if animals, then surely men! Yet it was the struggle of men-their competition at least that, in Malthus, suggested to Darwin the whole business. And how does Goethe view it? Why thus He "has observed that, in whatever situation of life we are placed, and wherever we fall, we never want actual food." That means, that however galling the straits of life may be, there is no struggle such that, failing to triumph, we must perish in defeat.

CHAPTER VI.

THE SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST.

Nay, in fact between the accepted, there is a direct The one is pessimistic,

As regards our other consideration at present, it is pretty evident that if struggle there is none, survival, in that it simply means result of foregone contest, can be, and must be, so far, only a dead letter. two ideas, supposing each to be and point-blank antagonism. and points only to the existence of evil, strife; while the other is optimistic, and proclaims the triumph of the good. Detur digniori! If here below it is always the fittest survives, then the problem of problems is solved, the question of questions is answered: This world, even as it is, is a providential world. There is a good God over it; absolute justice reigns; it is the fittest is rewarded! Where, then, the litany of woes for which another world is to bestow the recompense?

But, just squarely to say it, the proposition itself, survival of the fittest, is, as things are, preposterousness proper. It is simply absurdity's self-the absolutely false. The fact--and we have abundantly seen it-the fact that contingency reigns, that the category of the external cosmos is contingency that fact, singly and solely, is the all-sufficient proof, the inexorable demonstration. I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the

wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all. That is the true picture of the contingency of all things. Nor is it confined to the world of man. Fish of the sea and bird of the air, beast of the bush and herb of the field-all of them are alike exposed. Nay, contingency is not the lot of the animate alone, there is not one particle of the inanimate that escapes. Comets may glow and meteors may stream; but they glow and they stream in contingency. The tides are minuted; but they will not be so minuted for ever, and meantime there is not a tide that rises but rises in contingency. No wind that blows, but blows in contingency. No sun that shines, but shines in contingency. Nor is it otherwise with the fountain that bubbles, or the stream that flows, or the rain that falls. Fountain, stream, rain, are all at the will of contingency. No, you say; all is of necessity; and of necessity so that all will come again,-all will but repeat itself. There is such iron necessity in the very heart of the atoms, which alone are, that an Earthquake of Lisbon, a Vespers of Sicily, a Black Hole of Calcutta, an Alexander, a Cæsar, a Mahomet, a smoke of Trafalgar, a cannonade of Sebastopol-will all recur again. But no; that is not so nothing that ever was will ever more return. Not a day, an hour, a minute, that ever throughout this great universe lived, can ever anew live the life it lived, brief but most real. Time recrudesces never, nor space, nor aught that is in either. Physical necessity! Yes; but it is even because of this physical necessity that all is physically contingent. Ay, that alone, contingency alone, is the iron master to which we have all to submit. Not one of us but is just waiting here— absolutely impotent before whatever contingency may doom. Man! boast not thyself of to-morrow; for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth. That from

physical necessity, you say again. Yes, from physical necessity as parent source and first, originating force, but physical necessity at play with the infinitude of matter, in the infinitude of space, throughout the infinitude of time. Infinite streams, whose infinite lines infinitely cross, calculable therefore only of the Infinite! Calculable at all, then-Reason qua Reason being as it is? there not Veritates æterna-the Atoms of Reason-the very atoms of the Infinite itself-and indestructible so? Of these, is not contingency one?

Are

Survival of the Fittest! Of two lions that fight, must the strongest win? How about a thorn, or a stone, or an unlucky miss, and an unfortunate grapple, and a fatal strain-to say nothing of infinite contingencies of rest and fatigue, of sleep, and food, and health, that precede ? Train two men alike that are already alike in height, and weight, and measurable force, and

"Doubtful it stood;

As two spent swimmers, that do cling together,
And choke their art "-

will the result of a trial of naked strength between them be always calculably so? Or will incalculable contingency intervene, and assure the victory to one of them, that is indifferently either ? It is Cæsar who says (B. G. vii. 85) that in battle "exiguum loci ad declivitatem fastigium habet magnum momentum," which means that the advantage of the ground is determinative; and we may say it for lions and boxers as well as for armies. We have in Homer (Il. vi. 339), νίκη δ' ἐπαμείβεται avopas, for victory alternates to men. But it is Thucydides that shuts up in a single word, πapáλoyov, the whole matter of contingency in this element. In fact, the παράλογον πολέμου of Thucydides is "the chance of war" which was as well known to Napoleon