They saw at once how physical death was necessary to race progress, how the old died to make room for the young, and how each newborn creature had new possibilities of progress.
But when I spoke of all the progress of evolution, of even struggle and selection leading toward harmony, fitness and relationship, which is the thing we want, Ruth said:
“I don’t see how the lobster killing its fellows because it had a larger claw could lead to harmony and better relationship.”
That was a good point. But I scarcely had a chance to answer it, for Marian said that creatures had to develop themselves first.
Then I spoke again, in this relation, of changing standards of good and bad, how what was right for an animal, for the lobster, for instance, was wrong for us. I showed them how all animals were selfish, and had to be selfish and self-evolving alone; how we had to be unselfish only because we realized how vast we were. Marian spoke again of the criminal. She said: “If he were behind us, he, from his own point of view, would not be bad.”
“But he would have to be punished,” said Ruth, “and made to be good.”
“Yes,” I answered, “for he is human, and we expect human actions of him. But we would not dare to blame him.”
Henry said we would punish him not as a punishment to hurt him, but to teach him.
We spoke again of diversity as necessary to comprehension, to understanding. I told them I had a whimsical fancy that the first one-celled creature divided because it wanted company. If creatures never divided, and became different, they certainly could never understand each other. Marian said:
“I see now. It is like a girl who had always lived in her own family and developed pretty well there, but the more different people she met the better she would develop.”