To Lamarck, as to Dr. Darwin and Buffon, it was perfectly clear that the facts, that animals have to find their food under varying circumstances, and that they must defend themselves in all manner of varying ways against other creatures which would eat them if they could, were simply some of the conditions of their existence. In saying that the surrounding circumstances--which amount to the conditions of existence--determined the direction in which any plant or animal should be slowly modified, Lamarck includes as a matter of course the fact that the "stronger and better armed should eat the weaker," and thus survive and bear offspring which would inherit the strength and better armour of its parents. Nothing therefore can be more at variance with the truth than to represent Lamarck and the other early evolutionists as ignoring the struggle for existence and the survival of the fittest; these are inevitably implied whenever they use the word "_circonstances_" or environment, as I will more fully show later on, and are also expressly called attention to by the greater number of them.[250] "Animals, except those which are herbivorous, prey upon one another; and the herbivorous are exposed to the attacks of the flesh-eating races. "_The strongest and best armed for attack eat the weaker_, and the greater kinds eat the smaller. Individuals of the same race rarely eat one another; they war only with other races than their own."[251] Dr. Darwin here again has the advantage over Lamarck; for he has pointed out how the males contend with one another for the possession of the females, which I do not find Lamarck to have done, though he would at once have admitted the fact. Lamarck continues:-- "The smaller kinds of animals breed so numerously and so rapidly that they would people the globe to the exclusion of other forms of life, if nature had not limited their inconceivable multitude. As, however, they are the prey of a number of other creatures, live but a short time, and perish easily with cold, they are kept always within the proportions necessary for the maintenance both of their own and of other races.[252] "As regards the larger and stronger animals, they would become dominant, and be injurious to the conservation of many other races, if they could multiply in too great numbers. But as it is, they devour one another, and breed but slowly, and few at a birth, so that equilibrium is duly preserved among them. Man alone is the unquestionably dominant animal, but men war among themselves, so that it may be safely said the world will never be peopled to its utmost capacity."[253] In his fifth chapter Lamarck returns to the then existing arrangement and classification of animals.