societies and undertake long journeys--and thus avoid com-
petition. Many rodents fall asleep when the time comes that
competition should set in; while other rodents store food for
the winter, and gather in large villages for obtaining the necessary
protection when at work. The reindeer, when the lichens are
dry in the interior of the continent, migrate towards the sea.
Buffaloes cross an immense continent in order to find plenty of
food. And the beavers, when they grow numerous on a river,
divide into two parties, and go, the old ones down the river, and
the young ones up the river--and avoid competition. And
when animals can neither fall asleep, nor migrate, nor lay in
stores, nor themselves grow their food like the ants, they do
what the titmouse does, and what Wallace ( Darwinism, ch. v.)
has so charmingly described: they resort to new kinds of food--
and thus, again, avoid competition.

"Don't compete!--competition is always injurious to the
species, and you have plenty of resources to avoid it!" That
is the tendency of nature, not always realized in full; but always
present. That is the watchword which comes to us from the
bush, the forest, the river, the ocean. "Therefore combine--
practise mutual aid! That is the surest means for giving to
each and to all the greatest safety, the best guarantee of
existence and progress, bodily, intellectual, and moral." That
is what Nature teaches us; and that is what all those animals
which have attained the highest position in their respective
classes have done. That is also what man--the most primitive
man--has been doing; and that is why man has reached the
position upon which we stand now, as we shall see in the subse-
quent chapters devoted to mutual aid in human societies.

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