From the lowest forms of animal life up to the highest, man, this law proves to be operative. It is not denied that there is competition for food, for life, within the species, human and other. But that competition is not usual; it arises out of unusual and special conditions. There are instances of hunger-maddened mothers tearing away food from their children; men drifting at sea have fought for water and food as beasts fight, but these are not normal conditions of life. "Happily enough," says Kropotkin again, "competition is not the rule either in the animal world or in mankind. It is limited among animals to exceptional periods.... Better conditions are created by the _elimination of competition_ by means of mutual aid and mutual support."[91] This is the voice of science now that we have passed through the extremes and arrived at the "beautiful goal of calm wisdom." Competition is not, in the verdict of modern science, the law of life, but of death. Strife is not nature's way of progress. Anything more important to our present inquiry than this verdict of science it would be difficult to imagine. Men have for so long believed and declared struggle and competition to be the "law of nature," and opposed Socialism on the ground of its supposed antagonism to that law, that this new conception of nature's method comes as a vindication of the Socialist position. The naturalist testifies to the universality of the principle of cooeperation throughout the animal world, and the historian and sociologist to its universality throughout the greatest part of man's history. Present economic tendencies toward combination and away from competition, in industry and commerce, appear as the fulfilling of a great universal law. And the vain efforts of men to stop that process, by legislation, boycotts, and divers other methods, appear as efforts to set aside immutable law. Like so many Canutes, they bid the tides halt, and, like Canute's, their commands are vain and mocked by the unheeding tides.