CHAPTER VI - THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE

Summary

Matthew Arnold, in a well - remembered line, describes a bird in Kensington Gardens “deep in its unknown day's employ.” But, peace to the poet, its employ is all too certain. Its day is spent in struggling to get a living; and a very hard day it is. It awoke at daybreak and set out to catch its morning meal; but another bird was awake before it, and it lost its chance. With fifty other breakfastless birds, it had to bide its time, to scour the country; to prospect the trees, the grass, the ground; to lie in ambush; to attack and be defeated; to hope and be forestalled. At every meal the same programme is gone through, and every day. As the seasons change the pressure becomes more keen. Its supplies are exhausted, and it has to take wing for hundreds and thousands of miles to find new hunting-ground. This is how birds live, and this is how birds are made. They are the children of Struggle. Beak and limb, claw and wing, shape, strength, all down to the last detail, are the expressions of their mode of life.

This is how the early savage lived, and this is how he was made. The first practical problem in the Ascent of Man was to get him started on his upward path. It was not enough for Nature to equip him with a body, and plant his foot on the lowest rung of the ladder.