So all through the animal kingdom it is nearly a neck-to-neck race between production and extermination.

Life is a universal and unceasing [{17}] struggle, between the eaters and the eaten.

MAN alone is practically exempt from what is apparently an invariable

condition of all other forms of animal life. While he preys upon a myriad of created things, there is no created thing that preys on him and assists in keeping his excessive produc tiveness within the limits of subsistence. Most significant of all, not even a parasite wages destructive warfare against him. That is, if we except from the classification the doctors’ latest explanation [{18}] of the cause of everything, from pneumonia to laziness—the modest but effective bacillus. The bacillus, however, is much more a condition than a parasite.

This absence of destructive enemies must be compensated for in some way, and it is accomplished by making vicious inclinations the agents to weed out the redundant growths and to select for extermination those which are inferior, depraved, weak, and unfit for preservation or reproduction.

If five human beings are procreated where there is present room and provision but for three, how are the surplus [{19}] two to be picked out and exterminated?

Of course each one of us feels entirely competent to pick out in his own community the persons who could be best spared, but public opinion is at present hostile both to any practical plan of making the necessary thinning out, and also to lodging the power of selection in the hands of those of us best calculated for the duty.

APPARENTLY the surplus ones relieve us from embarrassment on this score by selecting to exterminate [{20}] themselves. Their methods of suicide cover a wide range of expedients but all are very effective.