e." We have given it an intensely
human application. We need to go back to Darwin who gave significance to
the phrase "struggle for existence." "I use this term," he said, "in a
large and metaphorical sense, including dependence of one being on
another, and including (which is more important) not only the life of
the individual, but success in leaving progeny." The dependence of one
being on another, success in leaving progeny,--how accurate and how
far-seeing was Darwin!

I hope that I speak to naturists and to farmers. They know how diverse
are the forms of life; and they know that somehow these forms live
together and that only rarely do whole races perish by subjugation. They
know that the beasts do not set forth to conquer, but only to gain
subsistence and to protect themselves. The beasts and birds do not
pursue indiscriminately. A hen-hawk does not attack crows or
butterflies. Even a vicious bull does not attack fowls or rabbits or
sheep. The great issues are the issues of live and let-live. There are
whole nations of plants, more unlike than nations of humankind, living
together in mutual interdependence. There are nations of quiet and
mightless animals that live in the very regions of the mighty and the
stout. And we are glad it is so.

Consider the mockery of invoking the struggle for existence as
justification for a battle on a June morning, when all nature is vibrant
with life and competition is severe, and when, if ever, we are to look
for strife. But the very earth breathes peace. The fulness of every
field and wood is in complete adjustment. The teeming multitudes of
animal and plant have found a way to live together, and we look abroad
on a vast harmony, verdurous, prolific, abounding. Into this concord,
project your holocaust!

_The daily fare_

Some pages back, I said something about the essential simplicity in
habit of life that results from the nature contact, and I illustrated
the remark by calling attention to the righteousness of simple eating
and drinking. Of course, the eating must be substantial, but the
adventitious appetites accomplish nothing and they may be not only
intemperate and damaging to health but even unmoral. Yet it is not alone
the simplicity of the daily fare that interests me here, but the
necessity that it shall be as direct as possible from the ground or the
sea, and that it shall be undisguised and shall have meaning beyond the
satisfying of the appetite.

I wa