which co-operation is a direct means of increasing the supply of food, obviously breaks down. If dogs and tigers were groups, organized on the basis of the division of labor, even the weak dogs and tigers could, conceivably, perform functions which would increase the food supply of the group as a whole, and, conceivably, their existence would render the security of that supply greater than would their elimination. If to-day a territory like England supports in comfort, a population of 45,000,000, where in other times rival groups, numbering at most two or three millions, found themselves struggling with one another for a bare subsistence, the greater quantity of food and the greater security of the supply is not due to any process of elimination of Wessex men by Northumbrian men, but is due precisely to the fact that this rivalry has been replaced by common action against their prey, the forces of nature. The obvious facts of the development of communities show that there is a progressive replacement of rivalry by co-operation, and that the vitality of the social organism increases in direct ratio to the efficiency of the co-operation, and to the abandonment of the rivalry, between its parts.16
All crude analogies between the processes of plant and animal survival and social survival are vitiated, therefore, by disregarding the dynamic element of conscious co-operation.
That mankind as a whole represents the organism and the planet the environment, to which he is more and more adapting himself, is the only conclusion that consorts with the facts. If struggle between men is the true reading of the law of life, those facts are absolutely inexplicable, for he is drifting away from conflict,