The winners in life's race

by Arabella B. Buckley

Yet these are all instances of affection of lower animals to man. We must turn to the birds, that group which has gone on increasing in strength and numbers down to our day, to find that tender devotion which watches over the helpless nursling, defends the young at the risk of life, nay, like the peewit with the dragging wing, will even run in the face of death to lure the cruel destroyer away from the hidden nest. Natural history teems with examples of birds faithful to each other and pining even till death for the loss of a mate; while many birds, such as rooks, starlings, wild geese, swans, and cranes, not only live in companies and exact obedience from their members, but even set sentinels to watch, the duties of the office being faithfully fulfilled.

Then again it is to the higher animals, those nearer to ourselves, that we must look for the truest affection, and the strongest proofs of that obedience and sympathy which lead them to unite and so become strong in the face of danger. Among the beasts of prey it is true that, except the wolves and jackals, none herd together; but family love is strong and true. No tiger is so dangerous as is the mother tigress if any one approaches her young ones, or the lioness whose cubs are attacked, and in our own homes we all know the tenderness and devotion of a cat to her kittens. Nevertheless, these animals have very little social feeling; theirs are the narrower virtues of courage and fidelity to home, and to the duty of providing food for wife and children. It is among the gentler vegetable-feeders,—the antelopes and gazelles, the buffaloes, horses, elephants, and monkeys,—that we find the instinct of herding together for protection, and with this the consciousness of the duty of obedience and fidelity to the herd and to one another.

It is easy to see how this was necessary to protect these feebler animals from the attacks of their ferocious neighbours, and also what an advantage they had when they had once learned to set sentinels who understood the duty of watching while others fed, as in the case of the chamois and seals, of obeying the signal of a leader like the young baboons on the march, or of putting the mothers and children in the centre for protection, as horses and buffaloes do.

And there is a real significance in this gradual education in duty to others which we must not overlook, for it shows that one of the laws of life which is as strong, if not stronger, than the law of force and selfishness, is that of mutual help and dependence. Many good people have shrunk from the idea that we owe the beautiful diversity of animal life on our earth to the struggle for existence, or to the necessity that the best fitted should live, and the feeblest and least protected must die. They have felt that this makes life a cruelty, and the world a battlefield. This is true to a certain extent, for who will deny that in every life there is pain and suffering and struggle? But with this there is also love and gentleness, devotion and sacrifice for others, tender motherly and fatherly affection, true friendship, and a pleasure which consists in making others happy.

This we might have thought was a gift only to ourselves—an exception only found in the human race; now we see that it has been gradually developing throughout the whole animal world, and that the love of fathers and mothers for their young is one of the first and greatest weapons in fighting life’s battle. So we learn that after all, the struggle is not entirely one of cruelty or ferocity, but that the higher the animal life becomes, the more important is family love and the sense of affection for others, so that at last a fierce beast of prey with strength and sharp tools at his command, is foiled in attacking a weak young calf, because the elders of the herd gather round him, and the destroyer is kept at bay.

Surely then we have here a proof that, after all, the highest and most successful education which Life has given her children to fit them for winning the race is that “unity is strength;” while the law of love and duty beginning with parent and child and the ties of home life, and developing into the mutual affection of social animals, has been throughout a golden thread, strengthened by constant use in contending with the fiercer and more lawless instincts.

So it becomes evident that the beautiful virtue of self-devotion, one of the highest man can practise, has its roots in the very existence of life upon the earth. It may appear dimly at first,—it may take a hard mechanical form in such lowly creatures as insects, where we saw the bees and ants sacrificing all tender feelings to the good of the community. But in the backboned family it exists from the very first as the tender love of mother for child, of the father for his mate and her young ones, and so upwards to the defence of the tender ones of the herd by the strong and well-armed elders, till it has found its highest development in man himself.

Thus we arrive at the greatest and most important lesson that the study of nature affords us. It is interesting, most interesting, to trace the gradual evolution of numberless different forms, and see how each has become fitted for the life it has to live. It gives us courage to struggle on under difficulties when we see how patiently the lower animals meet the dangers and anxieties of their lives, and conquer or die in the struggle for existence. But far beyond all these is the great moral lesson taught at every step in the history of the development of the animal world, that amidst toil and suffering, struggle and death, the supreme law of life is the law of Self-devotion and Love.

FOOTNOTES

[1] Almost every animal mentioned in this book is to be found alive in the London Zoological Gardens, or stuffed in the British Museum.