Cows herd together and practically all the ungulates and even such huge beasts as the elephants the young by traveling in groups sometimes containing as many as 20. When attacked by one of the big cats, the lions and the tigers, which find baby elephants par ticularly a toothsome morsel, the old bull ele phants on the outside of the herd prove finely capable of affording protection. Far from competition within the species being the law of biology, mutual aid is a deeper instinct in most cases, and very rarely does it happen that animals of the same kind struggle with each other for sustenance, except in cases of famine or when a mother under difficulties is seeking food for her young. Under these conditions the moral law does not bind among men, though the exceptions only prove the rule of the exist ence of law, and among animals these rather striking exceptions prove that there is a law or instinct of mutual aid by which the animals help each other very materially.
Two things are necessary for the preserva tion of species. One is food provision and the other is propagation of the race. Food pro vision under certain circumstances may necessi tate the struggle for existence, but the propaga tion of the race involving as it does the exist ence of small weak animals necessitates a law of mutual aid and such is actually found to exist. The overemphasis on food provision and the failure to appreciate at their true value the conditions necessary for raising the young weak animals led to an unfortunate misunder standing in biological science. As Prince Kro potkin suggested "men came to conceive the animal world as a world of perpetual struggle among half starved individuals, thirsting for one another's blood. They made modern litera ture resound with the war cry of 'woe to the vanquished) as if it were the last word of modern biology. They raised the struggle for personal advantages to the height of a biological principle which man must sub mit to as well, under the menace of otherwise succumbing in a world based upon mutual ex termination" What we have found instead of "nature red in claw and tooth" is the great principle of charity, or the dearness of fellow beings existing all over nature. The animals help each other, many of them delight to play with each other and animal sports are common, they care above all for the young and the weaklings and for whatever of evolution has come this has been a prominent factor. The struggle for existence is incidental to life but the great law of mutual aid is a fundamental instinct in living beings, a basic anticipation of the law of charity among men which though often violated remains deep in human hearts as the impress of brotherhood.
The theory of evolution and of descent was very seriously disturbed by Weismann's in jection into the discussion of the principle of the non-inheritance of acquired characters. It was easy to theorize that anything acquired by an animal in its struggle for existence would make it more likely to be preserved and this would give the next generation a better chance and would be passed on in ever more favorably modified forms to succeeding generations until a new species would result. Once it came to be acknowledged however as it had to be, that acquired characters are not transmitted, or so rarely as to be quite an exception to the order of nature, then this scaffolding of theory col lapsed, leaving some other explanation of the gradual improvement of living things to be, evolved. As pointed out by Driesch the only thing that would explain the upward steps in descent is that definite heightening impulses were put into living things from without with the purpose that they should improve in order of being. In this too modern science finds it self under the necessity of recurring to a creative impulse, a creative evolution, such as was included in the explanations of the great philosophic fathers of the Church. Darwin
in his 'Descent of Man' said "The birth both of the species and of the individual are equally parts of that grand sequence of events which our minds refuse to accept as the result of blind chance" (Vol. II, p. 396).
The argument from design in the world for the existence of a Creator is now actually stronger than ever in scientific minds, and a re view of all the purposes that exist among living things makes it quite impossible to believe that they were developed without a Designer. The telling arguments against ultra-Darwinism, the evidence that the struggle for existence and natural selection are not only not exclusive factors, but not even important elements in the differentiation of species, have been found in those domains of creation which exhibit the strongest proofs of design. The story of the complex instincts of many animals and particu larly the insects make it very clear that Or could not have come into existence by any net chance, that is, purposeless succession of events. and least of all by any accumulation of minimal fortuitous changes which finally modified func tion and organ to the extent needed for the per fecting of instincts as we know them. Insects would have been handicapped rather than favored in the struggle for life during the in termediate stages of the development of these instincts and the apparatus connected with They would therefore have perished before the instincts had become useful. Fabre, the great French entomologist whom Darwin proclaimed "an incomparable observer," has been the strongest opponent of natural selection or chance being. in any way responsible for insect instincts. He insists that it is quite impossible to conceive of these instincts coming into exist ence except as the result of design. Fahre. discussing the modern theory of instinct, does not hesitate to say that "theories of atavism. of natural selection, of the struggle for life cannot interpret it reasonably." He even went so far as to add with regard to theoretic ex planations of the life and instincts of them sects — and surely no one had a better right than he to an opinion on this subject — that he saw in them "no more than an ingenious game in which the arm-chair naturalist who shapes the world according to his whim is able to take delight but in which the observer, the man graP piing with reality, fails to find a serious ex planation of anything whatsoever that he sees,' For Fabre every portion of the insect world is a manifestation of design. "The wing of a cricket, that wonderful piece of lace work emerging from a tiny sheath, speaks to us of another Architect — the Author of the plan ac cording to which life labors." Regeneration is the other phase of biology which after instinct has served to make it very clear that any chance result of the struggle for life could not serve as an explanation of biological developments. Professor Thomas Hunt Morgan of Columbia University did not hesitate to say that there are "insurmountable objections to the view that the process of re generation can have been produced by natural selection." He quotes Driesch that "We can only reach a satisfactory view of the phenomena (of ontogeny) when we introduce the word purpose. This means that we must look upon ontogeny as a process carried out in its order and quality as though guided by an•intelligence?) Teleology then has come back with redoubled force, and anyone who is not willing to stop short of our ordinary processes of reasoning in matters of science must recognize the exist ence of design and the constant manifestation of purpose in living things around us.