And we shall be made truly wise if we be made content; content, too,
not only with what we can understand, but, content with what we do
not understand--the habit of mind which theologians call--and
rightly--faith in God; the true and solid faith, which comes often
out of sadness, and out of doubt, such as bio-geology may well stir
in us at first sight. For our first feeling will be--I know mine
was when I began to look into these matters--one somewhat of dread
and of horror.

Here were all these creatures, animal and vegetable, competing
against each other. And their competition was so earnest and
complete, that it did not mean--as it does among honest shopkeepers
in a civilised country--I will make a little more money than you;
but--I will crush you, enslave you, exterminate you, eat you up.
"Woe to the weak," seems to be Nature's watchword. The Psalmist
says: "The righteous shall inherit the land." If you go to a
tropical forest, or, indeed, if you observe carefully a square acre
of any English land, cultivated or uncultivated, you will find that
Nature's text at first sight looks a very different one. She seems
to say: Not the righteous, but the strong, shall inherit the land.
Plant, insect, bird, what not--Find a weaker plant, insect, bird,
than yourself, and kill it, and take possession of its little
vineyard, and no Naboth's curse shall follow you: but you shall
inherit, and thrive therein, you, and your children after you, if
they will be only as strong and as cruel as you are. That is
Nature's law: and is it not at first sight a fearful law?
Internecine competition, ruthless selfishness, so internecine and so
ruthless that, as I have wandered in tropic forests, where this
temper is shown more quickly and fiercely, though not in the least
more evilly, than in our slow and cold temperate one, I have said: