Dr. Jacks speaks of the bloody work of the struggle for existence, but the struggle for existence is largely a bloodless struggle of adaptation. Through it, every creature sooner or later finds its place, finds where it fits into the scheme of things. Through it the mouse finds its place, and the lion its, and man has found his. Living bodies are not ready-made, so to speak, like the parts of machinery; they are constantly in the making, and their making is a process of transformation. The horse, as we know him, was millions of years in the making; so was the elephant; so was man; so was every other form of life. The struggle for existence as a whole is cruel only so far as all discipline and all insensible modifications and adaptations under the pressure of environment are cruel; it is good in the guise of evil; it is the stern beneficence of impartial law. The greater the power of adaptation, the more fit is the animal or plant to survive, and this power of adaptation is mainly what distinguishes living bodies from non-living. Inanimate bodies tend to adjust themselves to one another through mechanical laws; animate bodies tend to adapt themselves to one another and to their environment through vital law. The struggle for existence is for the most part a struggle with inanimate nature--with climate, soil, wind, flood. A peaceful struggle is going on all around us at all times, among men as among animals and plants: a struggle to live, to compel Nature to yield us the things needed for our lives. It is not often competition--an effort to win what another must lose; it is an effort to seize and appropriate the elements that all may have on equal terms, by the exercise of strength, industry, wit, prudence. Life is predaceous only to a limited extent. In the wilds, in the jungle, one form devours another form, but nature compensates. A fuller measure of life is given to those forms that are the prey of other forms; they are more prolific. The rats and mice are vastly more prolific than the weasels or the owls that feed upon them; the rabbits have ten young to one of their enemy, the fox; the lesser birds greatly outnumber the hawks; the little fishes that are the food of the big fishes swarm in the sea. Probably no species is ever exterminated by its natural enemies. These enemies only keep it in check. The birds keep the insects from ruining vegetation, which is the source of all food. Slay all the lions in Africa, and probably the struggle for existence of the antelope tribe would soon be harder than it is now. Hence the animals of prey are a good gift even to the animals they prey upon. The plus of the breeding instinct of the latter would in time result in overpopulation and in famine.