and mechanical forces, busy about the little plant, and every cell
of it, kindly and patiently ready to help it if it would only help
itself? Surely this is true; true of every organic thing, animal
and vegetable, and mineral too, for aught I know: and so we must
soften our sadness at the sight of the universal mutual war by the
sight of an equally universal mutual help.

But more. It is true--too true if you will--that all things live on
each other. But is it not, therefore, equally true that all things
live for each other?--that self-sacrifice, and not selfishness, is
at the bottom the law of Nature, as it is the law of Grace; and the
law of bio-geology, as it is the law of all religion and virtue
worthy of the name? Is it not true that everything has to help
something else to live, whether it knows it or not?--that not a
plant or an animal can turn again to its dust without giving food
and existence to other plants, other animals?--that the very tiger,
seemingly the most useless tyrant of all tyrants, is still of use,
when, after sending out of the world suddenly, and all but
painlessly, many an animal which would without him have starved in
misery through a diseased old age, he himself dies, and, in dying,
gives, by his own carcase, the means of life and of enjoyment to a
thousandfold more living creatures than ever his paws destroyed?

And so, the longer one watches the great struggle for existence, the
more charitable, the more hopeful, one becomes; as one sees that,
consciously or unconsciously, the law of Nature is, after all self-
sacrifice: unconscious in plants and animals, as far as we know;
save always those magnificent instances of true self-sacrifice shown
by the social insects, by ants, bees, and others, which put to shame
by a civilisation truly noble--why should I not say divine, for God