A certain rather formidable natural enemy
called Famine rise slowly but inexorably against them and slaughter
them wholesale. The first proposition then to which I demand your
assent is that all plants and animals tend to increase in a high
geometrical ratio; that they all endeavour to get that which is
necessary for their own welfare; that, as unfortunately there are
conflicting interests in Nature, collisions constantly occur between
different animals and plants, whereby the rate of increase of each
species is very materially checked. Do you admit this?
C. Of course; it is obvious.
F. You admit then that there is in Nature a perpetual warfare of
plant, of bird, of beast, of fish, of reptile; that each is striving
selfishly for its own advantage, and will get what it wants if it
can.
C. If what?
F. If it can. How comes it then that sometimes it cannot? Simply
because all are not of equal strength, and the weaker must go to the
wall.
C. You seem to gloat over your devilish statement.
F. Gloat or no gloat, is it true or no? I am not one of those
"Who would unnaturally better Nature
By making out that that which is, is not."
If the law of Nature is "struggle," it is better to look the matter
in the face and adapt yourself to the conditions of your existence.
Nature will not bow to you, neither will you mend matters by patting
her on the back and telling her that she is not so black as she is
painted. My dear fellow, my dear sentimental friend, do you eat
roast beef or roast mutton?
C. Drop that chaff and go back to the matter in hand.
F. To continue then with the cats. Famine comes and tests them, so
to speak; the weaker, the less active, the less cunning, and the less
enduring cats get killed off, and only the strongest and smartest
cats survive; there will be no favouritism shown to animals in a
state of Nature; they will be weighed in the balance, and the weight
of a hair will sometimes decide whether they shall be found wanting
or no. This being the case, the cats having been thus naturally
culled and the stronger having been preserved, there will be a
gradual tendency to improve manifested among the cats, even as among
our own mobs of sheep careful culling tends to improve the flock.
C. This, too, is obvious.
F. Extend this to all animals and plants, and the same thing will
hold good concerning them all. I shall now change the ground and
demand assent to another statement. You know that though the
offspring of all plants and animals is in the main like the parent,
yet that in almost every instance slight deviations occur, and that
sometimes there is even considerable divergence from the parent type.
It must also be admitted that these slight variations are often, or
at least sometimes, capable of being perpetuated by inheritance.
Indeed, it is only in consequence of this fact that our sheep and
cattle have been capable of so much improvement.
