On Bio-Geology : Part 6

Health and Education
by Rev. Charles Kingsley

(Page 13 of 20)

Here were all these creatures, animal and vegetable, competing against each other. And their competition was so earnest and complete, that it did not mean - as it does among honest shopkeepers in a civilised country - I will make a little more money than you; but - I will crush you, enslave you, exterminate you, eat you up. "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, "Every one for himself, and the devil take the hindmost." Over-reaching tyranny; the temper which fawns, and clings, and plays the parasite as long as it is down, and when it has risen, fattens on its patron's blood and life - these, and the other works of the flesh, are the works of average plants and animals, as far as they can practise them. At least, so says at first sight the science of bio-geology; till the naturalist, if he be also human and humane, is glad to escape from the confusion and darkness of the universal battle-field of selfishness into the order and light of Christmas-tide.

For then there comes to him the thought - And are these all the facts? And is this all which the facts mean? That mutual competition is one law of Nature, we see too plainly. But is there not, besides that law, a law of mutual help? True it is, as the wise man has said, that the very hyssop on the wall grows there because all the forces of the universe could not prevent its growing.

All honour to the hyssop. A brave plant, it has fought a brave fight, and has its just deserts - as everything in Nature has - and so has won. But did all the powers of the universe combine to prevent it growing? Is not that a one-sided statement of facts? Did not all the powers of the universe also combine to make it grow, if only it had valour and worth wherewith to grow? Did not the rains feed it, the very mortar in the wall give lime to its roots? Were not electricity, gravitation, and I know not what of chemical and mechanical forces, busy about the little plant, and every cell of it, kindly and patiently ready to help it, if it would only help itself? Surely this is true; true of every organic thing, animal and vegetable, and mineral, too, for aught I know: and so we must soften our sadness at the sight of the universal mutual war by the sight of an equally universal mutual help.

But more. It is true - too true if you will - that all things live on each other. But is it not, therefore, equally true that all things live for each other? - that self-sacrifice, and not selfishness, is at the bottom the law of Nature, as it is the law of Grace; and the law of bio-geology, as it is the law of all religion and virtue worthy of the name? Is it not true that everything has to help something else to live, whether it knows it or not? - that not a plant or an animal can turn again to its dust without giving food and existence to other plants, other animals? - that the very tiger, seemingly the most useless tyrant of all tyrants, is still of use, when, after sending out of the world suddenly, and all but painlessly, many an animal which would without him have starved in misery through a diseased old age, he himself dies, and, in dying, gives, by his own carcase, the means of life and of enjoyment to a thousandfold more living creatures than ever his paws destroyed?

And so, the longer one watches the great struggle for existence, the more charitable, the more hopeful, one becomes; as one sees that, consciously or unconsciously, the law of Nature is, after all, self-sacrifice; unconscious in plants and animals, as far as we know; save always those magnificent instances of true self-sacrifice shown by the social insects, by ants, bees, and others, which put to shame by a civilization truly noble - why should I not say divine, for God ordained it? - the selfishness and barbarism of man. But be that as it may, in man the law of self-sacrifice - whether unconscious or not in the animals - rises into consciousness just as far as he is a man; and the crowning lesson of bio-geology may be, when we have worked it out, after all, the lesson of Christmas-tide - of the infinite self-sacrifice of God for man; and Nature as well as religion may say to us -

"Ah, could you crush that ever craving lust
For bliss, which kills all bliss, and lose your life,
Your barren unit life, to find again
A thousand times in those for whom you die -
So were you men and women, and should hold
Your rightful rank in God's great universe,
Wherein, in heaven or earth, by will or nature,
Naught lives for self. All, all, from crown to base -
The Lamb, before the world's foundation slain -
The angels, ministers to God's elect -
The sun, who only shines to light the worlds -
The clouds, whose glory is to die in showers -
The fleeting streams, who in their ocean graves
Flee the decay of stagnant self-content -
The oak, ennobled by the shipwright's axe -
The soil, which yields its marrow to the flower -
The flower, which feeds a thousand velvet worms
Born only to be prey to every bird -
All spend themselves on others: and shall man,
Whose two-fold being is the mystic knot
Which couples earth with heaven, doubly bound,
As being both worm and angel, to that service
By which both worms and angels hold their life,
Shall he, whose every breath is debt on debt,
Refuse, forsooth, to be what God has made him?
No; let him show himself the creatures' Lord
By free-will gift of that self-sacrifice
Which they, perforce, by Nature's laws endure."

My friends, scientific and others, if the study of bio-geology shall help to teach you this, or anything like this; I think that though it may not make you more happy, it may yet make you more wise; and, therefore, what is better than being more happy, namely, more blessed.

W. Isbister & CO., 1874.
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