actual suffering among the
creatures as the result of this struggle is probably small, and the
bloody and ferocious contest that we like to picture to ourselves is
relatively insignificant. There is a righteous element in the struggle;
or, more truthfully, the struggle itself is right. Every living and
sentient thing persists by its merit and by its right. It persists
within its sphere, and usually not in the sphere of some other creature.
The weeding-out process is probably related in some way with
adaptability, but only remotely with physical strength. It is a process
of applying the test. The test is applied continuously, and not in some
violent upheaval.

If one looks for a moral significance in the struggle for existence, one
finds it in the fact that it is a process of adjustment rather than a
contest in ambition.

The elimination of the unessentials and of the survivals of a lower
order of creation that have no proper place in human society, is the
daily necessity of the race. The human struggle should not be on the
plane of the struggle in the lower creation, by the simple fact that the
human plane is unlike; and those who contend that we should draw our
methods of contest from wild nature would therefore put us back on the
plane of the creatures we are supposed to have passed. If there is one
struggle of the creeping things, if there is one struggle of the fish of
the sea and another of the beasts of the field, and still another of the
fowls of the air, then surely there must be still another order for
those who have dominion.

_The struggle for existence: war_

We may consider even further, although briefly, the nature of the
struggle for existence in its spiritual relation. It would be violence
to assume a holy earth and a holy production from the earth, if the
contest between the creatures seems to violate all that we know as
rightness.

The notion of the contentious and sanguinary struggle for existence
finds its most pronounced popular expression in the existence of human
war. It is a wide-spread opinion that war is necessary in the nature of
things, and, in fact, it has been not only justified but glorified on
this basis. We may here examine this contention briefly, and we may ask
whether, in the case of human beings, there are other sufficient means
of personal and social development than by mortal combat with one's
fellows. We may ask whether the principle of enmity or the principle of
f