No struggle for existence, no natural selection : a critical examination of the fundemental principles of the Darwinian theory

Front matter

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Book II

I. THE MALTHUSIAN THEORY . . . .115

II. THE LAW OF POPULATION . . . .146

III. THE LAW OF POPULATION ILLUSTRATED . . 169

IV. RETROSPECT AND FORECAST . . . .199

V. THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE . . . 226 xxl

BOOK I.

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CHAPTER L

THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE.

HE evolutional theory of Darwin rests upon the doctrine of the struggle for existence as he has formulated it. My purpose in this chapter is to demonstrate that such a struggle for existence, as is required to render his principle of Natural Selection effective for the work which he imposes upon it, is not found in Nature, and is repudiated by all the phenomena of the organic world. How severe and intense, how relentless and unintermitting must be that great and complex battle of life, as Darwin may well call his struggle for existence, in regard to which he feels himself justified in using such language as follows : — “ Can we doubt (remembering that many more individuals are born than can possibly survive) that individuals having any advantage, however slight, over others would have the best chance of surviving and of procreating their kind ? On the other hand, we may feel sure that any variation in the least degree injurious would be rigidly destroyed. This preservation of favourable individual differences and variations, and the destruction of those which are injurious, I have called Natural Selection, or the Survival of the

Fittest.” What a picture is here given of life and of the conditions under which all living creatures subsist ! The over-production of living beings, that from their numbers in a congested world cannot possibly survive, are doomed in the terrible struggle for existence, in the fierce competition for food and life, to perish before they can procreate their kind, because they differ sHghtly from those who are fortimate enough to survive in the matter of their individual differences or variations.

It becomes understandable how the author of a concept of organic life so pessimistic felt himself constrained by the exigences of his hypothetical creed to wage unrelenting war against the notion of a benevolent Creator and of a designing Intelligence, and against any principle of beneficent purpose in any action of Nature, or in any of her developmental results.

Defining his struggle for existence, Darwin says : “Hence as more individuals are produced than can possibly survive, there must in every case be a struggle for existence, either one individual with another of the same species, or with the individuals of distinct species, or with the physical conditions of life. It is the doctrine of Malthus applied with manifold force to the whole animal and vegetable kingdoms ; for in this case there can be no artificial increase of food, and no prudential restraint from Marriage.”

I trust to demonstrate that this appalling picture of the conditions under which all oi’ganic life is lived is not only overcharged with gloom, hut is wholly untrue, not merely without support and corroboration from the actual phenomena of Nature, but is contradicted at all points by these phenomena ; and that universal misery and an unremitting struggle for life are neither the essential, nor the prevailing, conditions of organic existence.

“ The causes,” Darwin writes, “ which check the natural tendency of each species to increase are most obscure. Look at the most vigorous species : by as much as it swarms in numbers, by so much will it tend to increase still further. We know not exactly what the checks are even in a single instance.”

In this chapter I shall deal only with the most vigorous species, or the class of vertebrate animals, the checks upon whose increase seemed to Darwin so mysterious and obscure ; and in so doing, I shall show Nature, averting from them a struggle for existence such as he imagines to be their lot, by the manner in which she eliminates their excess of reproduction without calling to her aid the instrumentality of individual variations, either advantageous or injurious. In the chapter which follows this, I shall demonstrate that she cannot and does not use such variations for any evolutional purpose, while in this I confine myself to making it clear that they play no part in deciding what individxials shall survive and what shall perish.

In this work I aim at dispelling the pessimistic view of Nature in her dealings with her sentient creatures, accoi’ding to which, with the followers of

Darwin, she is represented as contemplating not their happiness, but merely their slow evolution through indefinite time, in the course of which their material well-being is ever being offered up and sacrificed upon the shrine of far remote developmental issues, while present misery must be the lot of everything that lives.

I desire, as far as lies in my power, to revive in the minds of young men, who are prone to accept as authoritative the current beliefs that prevail in scientific coteries, a reverence for the Divine in Nature, and a belief in the moral and spiritual forces of the Universe; to counteract, in short, that gross and degrading materialism which Darwin has gone far to make the recognised stamp of present-day scientific thought. I am not turned aside from my task by being constrained to acknowledge that there is a general consensus of opinion that the doctrine of Darwin is founded on the solid rock, that it has stood the test of time, and come triumphantly out of the fiercest fires of controversy ; that it lias won the enthusiastic assent of the scientist as of the man in the street ; that the whole literature of two generations has pronounced it inviolable and irrefutable.

I am sufficiently acquainted with the scientific speculations of past ages, and with the various Naturecreeds that have had their day, and obtained during their currency the universal assent of thinking men as well as of the multitude from the time of Anaxagoras up to the present hour, to be well assured that the concurrence of mankind, embracing all its intelligence.

all its wit and wisdom, is worth absolutely nothing where a purely speculative Nature-creed is concerned.

Between that practical science which since the beginning of the nineteenth century has transformed the earth, and quickened the heart-beat, and raised the hopes of humanity, and the speculative science of the same period, there is a great gulf fixed. Practical science has advanced from point to point, ever taking its start from the knowledge of phenomena already acquired, employing in its progressive stages legitimate inductive and deductive processes : and therefore and thereby, it gives promise of future developments that the imagination of the present day feels its inadequacy to forecast.

But what of the other ? What of the speculative science of our own times ? What of that boastful excursion into the realms of pure theory which is known as the creed of science, and which is a series of assumptions resting upon no material basis ?

To deal with its two fundamental principles, which are the struggle for existence and the evolutional value of the individual variation, to prove that the first is not the law of life and that the second is an impossible dream, is the task which I feel myself competent to discharge in -this and the following chapters.

In the animal kingdom the individuals of each species reproduced in each generation far exceed the number that could, if they all survived, find maintenauce. In the case of many species it is easy to account for the fact that they do not increase in undue numbers, as for instance in the case of the antelope and other herbivorous animals that are non-prolific, and as a rule produce but one offspring at a time. These creatures are born for two ends : the first being to enjoy their own existence and propagate their kind ; the second being to afford sustenance to the carnivorous animals to whom they supply the necessary amount of food.

It is obvious that if such herbivorous animals are to fulfil those ends, the creatures that prey upon them must not be too numerous, otherwise the prey would in process of time be exterminated ; while, on the other hand, if the carnivorous devourers were too few, the herbivora would increase to an undue extent. It is evident, therefore, that Nature must have a definite plan by which she maintains from generation to generation a due proportion between the numbers of the carnivora and the creatures which form their natural food. Of the manner in which Nature keeps true the balance of life between them, I shall speak at the close of this chapter.

If we ask what are the causes of destruction which eliminate the excess of Natui'e’s reproduction, and contemplate her various higher or vertebrate types, it is obvious at a glance that the carnivora hold the key of the position ; for they are Nature’s agents for keeping within due bounds the numbei’S of all the herbivorous forms of life, even such forms as the elephant and the hippopotamus, paying to them a

sufficient tribute of their infant offspring to keep

down their numbers and prevent their undue increase.

It is sufficiently well established that in their native haunts the carnivora do not, as a rule, make war upon each other, and that they prefer as food the more succulent flesh of their natural herbivorous prey ; and as that is always in sufficient plenty, there prevails a certain comity and comradeship among the purely carnivorous tenants of the desert and the jungle. They are, moreover, careful of their skins, and prefer to get their food with as little danger to themselves as possible. The Hon and leopard will not face, unless he is caught at great disadvantage, either an adult wild boar or a full-grown biiffalo, but they will readily carry off a straggling pigling or an infant buffalo. When battles occur between individuals of the same species, it is almost invariably when one has struck down a quarry, and another coming up covets it. If the new-comer is manifestly the stronger, the weaker will abandon its kill to it ; but if the original killer thinks that it can maintain its right to what it has killed, a fierce battle will ensue, ending, it may be, in the death of one of the combatants. Biit such battles are necessarily very infrequent.

That there is a prevailing comity and not a mutual antipathy between the strong denizens of Nature’s haunts is, I think, conclusively proved by the experiments of Mr. Hagenbach, the well-known proprietor lO of the Zoological Gardens at Hamburg. He conceived the idea, which for many years he has put in practice, of not confining the larger carnivora in separate cages, but of placing the several species together, lions, tigers, leopards, hyaenas, bears, wolves, etc., in a large enclosed space, where they have room to move about freely. The animals have not been specially trained for such companionship, and many have been added to the collection immediately on being imported. Mr. Hagenbach’s idea was to assimilate as far as possible the life of the various species to the conditions which obtain in their native habitats. The result of the comradeship thus established has been most happy. They live longer, look better, have glossier coats than the same animals kept in solitary confinement.

Let us now seriously consider the applicability of Darwin’s doctrine of Natural Selection to the conditions and phenomena of feral hfe as regards the carnivora. Let us endeavour to look squarely in the face the faets of the case, and draw such conclusions as appear inevitable. I select for my purpose one of the larger felidfe.

Take a certain area of jungle enclosing 100 pairs of adult tigers. The average age to which a tiger attains is supposed to be about thirty years, in which period it breeds, we will say, seven times, producing on an average three offspring at a birth. The exact figures are immaterial, but let iis take them as I have given them. In each generation, then, 2100 tigers are born, and of these only 200 individuals.

THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE ii

or 100 pairs, survive to take the place of their parents and to procreate their kind.

Let me here give the outlines of a conversation which took place between myself and a friend, who is still a young man and imagines himself to be a confirmed disciple of Darwin ; but I think he is only conventionally so, and because he entertains the belief that a doctrine accepted by all scientific thinkers must be true.

I asked him if he found it possible to believe that in the above mentioned area of the jungle there survive in each generation from the struggle for existence 200 tigers by virtue of possessing individual variations which give them some slight advantage over the others, who to the number of 1900 perish from possessing less advantageous variations.

My friend answered : “ Surely. The fact that it is so seems to me to be an inevitable conclusion. You admit that the necessary elimination takes place in the great and terrible struggle for existence. Is it not obvious that the 200 who survive can only survive from having proved themselves the fittest to survive ? They are therefore naturally selected ; the weakest, as happens all throughout the realm of organic life, having gone to the wall and perished.”

“ Softly,” I replied. “ Let us leave out for the present what I admit or do not admit, and consider the actual conditions of the feral life of the tiger. Here we have 200 tigers which you tell me have been naturally selected to survive as being the fittest.

and 1900 which have perished because their variations were inferior. But how did they perish ? They did not pass out of existence like a dream of the night, nor without material means being employed. Let us then ask how they perished. It is well known to those familiar with their haunts that tigers do not attack or kill one another, except on the rare occasions when two, equally matched, fight over a kill which one of them has made. Accordingly, if I strike off from the amount 50 tigers killed in internecine strife, you must admit that I have made you a generous gift ; for I do not imagine that the number that perish in this manner amount to a tithe of what I have said. There still remain 1850 tigers to be eliminated in the course of a generation before any of them survive to procreate its kind. They do not destroy each other, and they have no other enemies that can destroy them ; for when the young are old enough to come forth from their dens, their parents protect them too effectually to permit of any other carnivorous beast attacking them. How, then, does their elimination take place ? ”

To this my friend replied : “ Their elimination must be constantly taking place, so that it is improbable there would be alive at any one time as many as 1000 young tigers in all. Darwin says the causes which check the natui-al tendency of each species to increase are most obscure. He resolves the question of surviving or perishing into a matter of the food supply : and I should imagine that in an area which has been fully

>3 stocked with its animal tenants for generations, if the normal population of adult tigers be 200, there cannot be a sufficient supply of their natural food to maintain, say, 1000 additional tigers, including in that amount the 200 destined to survive and 800 doomed to perish. It would appear, then, that the progeny who survive are those who from possessing superior individual variations or differences are able to get food and hve, and that the others fail to get the necessary amount of food.”

“ But, any good sir,” I replied, “ you must look at things in the concrete, lest by thrusting your mental eyes into a cloudbank of plausible abstract phrases, you act like the proverbial ostrich which, when hard pressed, thrusts its head into the sand and fancies it has escaped its pursuers by depriving itself of the power of seeing them. Make sure that your words, however admirable from a Darwinian point of view, are consonant with common sense and come within the sphere of the possible. You assume that in a limited area of jungle which can comfortably maintain in the aggregate only 400 adult and young tigers, there perish from inability to get the necessary food 1900 tigers in each generation. Yet the young tigers that appear as food - seekers are preserved, and have their maintenance assured to them so long as they are feeble and immature, by the protecting guardianship of their parents, and are only left to their own resources when they are able to hunt and kill for their own subsistence. I quite agree with you that our limited tract of jungle would not contain a sufficiency of their natural food for 2300 or even for 1200 tigers, young and parents together, for any length of time, but it would certainly do so for a space until their necessary food was reduced to a vanishing point. You must surely perceive that if Nature let loose upon them such a multitude of devourers, their natural prey would be exterminated, and the end would be the extermination by famine of all the tigers themselves, parents and progeny.”

“ But,” exclaimed my interlocutor, “ I do not perceive what conclusion you are making for. You admit that the offspring of the hundred pairs of tigers amount in a generation to 2100 individuals, and that of these 1900 must be eliminated before they begin to procreate their kind. Yet you appear to be arguing at one time against the very possibility of their being eliminated, and at another against the very possibility of their existing at all in such numbers.”

“ Your inference,” I answered, “ is perhaps not unreasonable. If the 1900 doomed tigers enter into the competition of life, then when we look at the conditions and phenomena of their feral existence we are constrained to admit that very few of them are destroyed by individuals of their own species or by individuals of other species. Sufficient is known and testified to by the numerous hunters of the larger felidte and other big game, to convince us that these creatures undergo no measurable thinning of their numbers by internecine warfare. While, again, if we assume that all the progeny of the hundred pairs become food-seekers along with their parents, the result would indeed he for them a famine-stricken existence, hut not until they had made an end of all their natural prey. I do not think that it is possible to escape from such a conclusion. However, let us for the present ignore this conclusion, and adopt your assumption that by reason of their possessincr inferior individual variations the 1900 doomed

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tigers are unable to find food and therefore die of starvation. In this case you will admit that I am very moderate when I say that three out of every four met with should be found in a starving condition. But as yet no hunter of big game has encountered a young tiger that was not in robust and lusty health. Mr. Kipling, indeed, in his romance of Naulahka, has described in his graphic way a tiger returning to his lair in the morning, after an unsuccessful night’s himting, coughing out his angry and hungry disgust at his non-success. But while I admit the right of the romancist to romance, I do not allow his doing so to affect my belief that no tiger ever had such an experience. No sportsman ever killed an emaciated tiger, unless it had become mangy and lean from old age.”

Here my friend exclaimed : “You are bringing matters to an impasse. Tell me, do you believe that the normal population of 100 pairs of tigers produce in their generation 2100 offspring ? ”

“ Yes,” I replied, “ there or thereabout.”

“ Do you believe,” he asked again, “ that in the great i6 competition for food, in the constant struggle for existence, none perish from internecine strife ? ”

“Not quite that,” I said, “but very few, an inappreciable amount when their numbers are taken into account. The known phenomena of feral life warrant me in saying so much.”

“ Do you believe, then,” asked my friend, “ that starvation does not act as an eliminating factor in the haunts of the tiger ? ”

“Neither,” I replied, “in the haunts of the tiger nor in the haunts of any carnivorous creature. Will you, on your part, answer me this question ? If you think it to be really the case that a struggle for existence prevails such as Darwin affirms must necessarily take place in feral life, a struggle of each individual striving either with others of his own or of other kinds, and if, as the inevitable result of this struggle, nine out of every ten of carnivorous animals perish either by starvation, or by the claws and teeth of their own or of other species, do you not suppose that every haunt of wild animals would exhibit manifold traces and signs of such dire and continuous slaughter as was being enacted in them ? Can you conceive it to be possible that the testimony of every observant frequenter of the forest, the jungle, and the desert would be that they come upon no cases of famished animals, and but very few of carnivora done to death by carnivora ? Would not every moimtain tract, every jungle, every desert home of feral life, abound in such visible evidences of the demoniac struggle for existence as would make it impossible for an acute observer of the phenomena of Nature to say that the causes which check the natural increase of carnivorous animals are very obscure ? These causes would be thrust upon his observation, so that, in almost every single instance, he would perceive the checks which prevent the carnivora from increasing imduly. I ask you also to consider another aspect of the situation. The young of Nature’s wild tribes in their native habitats are never observed to be more numerous in proportion to the adults than are young children to the human adults in a community. You admit that in the case of the carnivora the number of offspring produced is ten times greater than the number of those that can survive, and that all perish before procreating, except so many as are required to take the place of their parents in the next generation. Ought not therefore the number of young tigers, in relation to adults, to be always several times more numerous than they ever are observed to be ? In fact, the young never appear upon the stage of life to be more numerous than would suffice to take the place of the parents at their death. In a word, we behold only survivors — vigorous, healthy, and happy survivors. But where is the struggle for existence ? Where are the dying and the dead ? Above all, where are the carnivorous swarms that should be rending each other in pieces, or falling faint in the grip of famine ? ”

“ If I follow your argument,” said my friend, “ this is i8 your position. You affirm that the production of your 200 tigers amounts in their generation to 2100 individuals, of which all hut 200 are eliminated before they become producers of offspring. You deny that there is such an intercidal struggle for existence as Darwin has posited, which you say could not fail to he visibly in evidence in the case of all carnivorous species, and which you affirm is visible in the case of none of them. You affirm, too, that starvation is never normally — for I presume you mean normally — an agent in the elimination of the excess of reproduction.”

“ You have stated my position correctly,” I returned, “ to wit, that the elimination of such a vast number of food-seekers, as Darwin’s theory of the struggle for existence requires to be eliminated, is absolutely contradicted by the phenomena of , feral existence ; and moreover that it is at manifest variance with the conditions that prevail in it, and with the obvious fact that the normal population of each species in the jungle, the forest, and the desert remains constantly at the same point, while the young carnivora at no time seem to be more numerous than the adults.”

My friend here broke in : “ When you interrupted me, I was going to remark that you have brought the argument to this pass, that but one conclusion is left, to wit, that the only carnivorous offspring that become food-seekers are those who survive to propagate their kind, and that the others, being many times the numbers of such as become food-seekers, perish in immaturity in the dens and lairs which saw their birth. Do they die of infantile diseases, or are they devoured by their parents ? ”

My friend asked this question sneeringly, but I replied to him seriously.

“ Assuredly they must perish in their immaturity by one or other of these agencies. Their elimination in infancy can alone explain the actual phenomena of Nature, and is the only explanation that is in accordance with the facts and phenomena of feral life. Adopt it, and the causes which check the natural tendency of each species to increase are no longer ‘ most obscure.' Darwin found them most obscure, because he began to look for them after they had fully acted. They had done their perfect work before his keen observation was directed upon the phenomena of Nature with a view to discover them.”

“ Then,” said my interlocutor, “ kindly deign to inform me how you imagine the excess of Nature’s reproduction is, in the case of the carnivora, eliminated before the young that perish become food-seekers. It seems to me to be a very absurd thing to believe that Nature reproduces her offspring in such numbers only to kill them off before they have begun to enjoy life.”

To this I replied : “ Do you then believe that Nature’s action would be wiser and less cruel if she sent her enormous reproduction into the struggle for existence to be starved to death from being unable to find food, or to be mangled to death by tooth and claw in their youthful prime ? It is indeed to prevent such a struggle for existence, and to preserve her offspring from such a fate, that she painlessly eliminates them in the earliest stage of existence. As for reproducing her offspring in numbers that appear unnecessarily large, she has a very practical and important end to serve, namely, in the case of any sudden destruction falling upon any of her species, to provide the means of its speedily recovering its numbers : while the waste of life is of no moment, and its seeming heartlessness is discounted by the fact of its entailing no misery or suffering. You do not exclaim against her waste of life when you see Nature producing from a plant thousands of seeds of which only one will come to maturity. The same principle prevails in the animal kingdom as in the vegetable, and its action is accompanied with as little pam in the one as in the other. Such a principle as the struggle for existence is one which Nature with all her divine heart abhors. I shall now endeavour to answer your question as to how the immature offspring are deleted.

“ When I first turned my attention to the task of endeavouring to ascertain, if it were possible to do so, the manner in which Nature deletes her excess of reproduction, I was not long in perceiving the force of the considerations which we have passed under review, and in arriving at the inevitable conclusion that there must be some check imposed by Nature which acts before the young appear as food-seekers, and which in every haunt that is fully stocked with its feral inhabitants must be capable of preserving one pair, and not more than one pair, to succeed their parents in a generation.

“ I had thus two distinct problems before me, first to discover what is Nature’s method of eliminating her e.vcess of reproduction, and second, what is her method of preserving alive the necessary and no more than the necessary number of young to take the place of their parents. For a time the solution of the first problem appeared to me a hopeless task ; but a seemingly accidental circumstance put me on a track that eventually brought me to the required solution. For some years I had kept in my house two cats, a male and a female. From time to time in the course of four years the female showed signs of pregnancy, and then appeared lean and lank, as if she had been newly dehvered ; but no brood ever appeared to certify the fact. The male, however, happening to he killed, the female not long after became a happy mother of kittens. It was therefore obvious that the male had devoured her former litters. More in jest than earnest, I asked myself. Can this be the manner in which Nature’s e.xcess of reproduction in respect of the carnivora is eliminated ? However, my curiosity on the subject was excited, and I made further inquiries and observations. I found that in every case where a tomcat was tenant of the same house with a tabby, the litters of the latter were sure to be devoured by the former. I have also more than once observed, and have been informed by others who have noticed it, that when the female is pregnant, the male cat some days before the parturition of the female follows her about persistently wherever she goes, while she appears to be in a state of great excitement, and often in an access of rage flies upon him and drives him off* for the time being. I ask you to take note of this fact ; for if the behaviour of the male cat be representative as regards the carnivora, it signifies that there must be some odour about a female advanced in pregnancy that provokes the male to keep her close company in expectancy of a feast to be shortly provided for him. It points in my mind to a provision of Nature to secure that the amount of elimination of the young shall be sufficient for her pm’poses.” My friend here interposed : “ What you say may be quite true of the cat, which is a domestic animal ; but have you any well grounded reason for believing that the cannibal habit of the male cat is representative of the carnivora generally ? for everything lies in your ability to prove that such is the case.”