"We were talking about this yesterday," he said. "I held that life
was a ferment, a yeasty something which devoured life that it might
live, and that living was merely successful piggishness. Why, if
there is anything in supply and demand, life is the cheapest thing
in the world. There is only so much water, so much earth, so much
air; but the life that is demanding to be born is limitless.
Nature is a spendthrift. Look at the fish and their millions of
eggs. For that matter, look at you and me. In our loins are the
possibilities of millions of lives. Could we but find time and
opportunity and utilize the last bit and every bit of the unborn
life that is in us, we could become the fathers of nations and
populate continents. Life? Bah! It has no value. Of cheap
things it is the cheapest. Everywhere it goes begging. Nature
spills it out with a lavish hand. Where there is room for one
life, she sows a thousand lives, and it's life eats life till the
strongest and most piggish life is left."

"You have read Darwin," I said. "But you read him
misunderstandingly when you conclude that the struggle for
existence sanctions your wanton destruction of life."

He shrugged his shoulders. "You know you only mean that in
relation to human life, for of the flesh and the fowl and the fish
you destroy as much as I or any other man. And human life is in no
wise different, though you feel it is and think that you reason why
it is. Why should I be parsimonious with this life which is cheap
and without value? There are more sailors than there are ships on
the sea for them, more workers than there are factories or machines
for them. Why, you who live on the land know that you house your
poor people in the slums of cities and loose famine and pestilence