ted,
you will find that Nature's text at first sight looks a very different
one. She seems to say--Not the righteous, but the strong, shall inherit
the land. Plant, insect, bird, what not--Find a weaker plant, insect,
bird, than yourself, and kill it, and take possession of its little
vineyard, and no Naboth's curse shall follow you: but you shall inherit,
and thrive therein, you, and your children after you, if they will be
only as strong and as cruel as you are. That is Nature's law: and is it
not at first sight a fearful law? Internecine competition, ruthless
selfishness, so internecine and so ruthless that, as I have wandered in
tropic forests, where this temper is shown more quickly and fiercely,
though not in the least more evilly, than in our slow and cold temperate
one, I have said--Really these trees and plants are as wicked as so many
human beings.

Throughout the great republic of the organic world, the motto of the
majority is, and always has been as far back as we can see, what it is,
and always has been, with the majority of human beings, "Every one for
himself, and the devil take the hindmost." Over-reaching tyranny; the
temper which fawns, and clings, and plays the parasite as long as it is
down, and when it has risen, fattens on its patron's blood and
life--these, and the other works of the flesh, are the works of average
plants and animals, as far as they can practise them. At least, so says
at first sight the science of bio-geology; till the naturalist, if he be
also human and humane, is glad to escape from the confusion and darkness
of the universal battle-field of selfishness into the order and light of
Christmas-tide.

For then there comes to him the thought--And are these all the facts? And
is this all which the facts mean? That mutual competition is one law of
Nature, we see too plainly. But is there not, besides that law, a law of
mutual help? True it is, as the wise man has said, that the very hyssop
on the wall grows there because all the forces of the universe could not
prevent its growing. All honour to the hyssop. A brave plant, it has
fought a brave fight, and has its just deserts--as everything in Nature
has--and so has won. But did all the powers of the universe combine to
prevent it growing? Is not that a one-sided statement of facts? Did not
all the powers of the universe also combine to make it grow, if only it
had valour and worth wherewith to grow? Did not the rains