"Woe to the weak," seems to be Nature's watchword. The Psalmist
says: "The righteous shall inherit the land." If you go to a
tropical forest, or, indeed, if you observe carefully a square acre
of any English land, cultivated or uncultivated, 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:
"Everyone for himself, and the devil take the hindmost.
Pages:
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34