Pattern and Progress on the Geological Stage 471
to natural selection as the "gladiatorial theory" of existence and, in his famous
essay on ethics and evolution (1893), urged human beings, as a primary ethical
precept, to determine nature's ways and then act in an opposite manner.
(Gladiators, by the way, and to make Huxley's etymological point, are not happy or
grateful people, but warriors who fight to the death with a gladius, or sword in
Latin.)
Darwin's decided choice in advocating a predominant relative frequency for
biotic competition as a mode of struggle forms the crucial link in a chain of
argument that stretches back to basic beliefs about the fullness of nature and points
forward to a rationale for progress and the need for a uniformitarian geological
stage. Consider a sequence of five consecutive, but interrelated subjects:
The rule of biotic competition
Prince Peter Kropotkin, the charming Russian anarchist who spent 30 years in
English exile, has generally been viewed as idiosyncratic and politically motivated
in his famous attack on Darwinian competition, and his advocacy of cooperation as
the norm of nature—Mutual Aid (1902). In fact, Kropotkin, who was well trained
in biology, spoke for a Russian consensus in arguing that density-independent
regulation by occasional, but severe, environmental stress will tend to encourage
intraspecific cooperation as a mode of natural selection (Todes, 1988; Gould,
1991b). The harsh environments of the vast Russian steppes and tundras often
elicited such a generalized belief; Kropotkin and colleagues had observed well in a
local context, but had erred in overgeneralization. But Darwin and Wallace,
schooled in the more stable and diversely populated tropics, may have made an
equally parochial error in advocating such a dominant role for biotic struggle over
limited resources in crowded space (Todes, 1988).
The shaping of diversity and the powering of natural selection by biotic
competition—and not primarily by simple selective response to changing physical
conditions—forms a central and recurring argument in the Origin. Three primary
themes record its sway:
THE NECESSARY PREREQUISITE OF PLENITUDE. If populations generally stand at
their carrying capacity, with numbers not fluctuating greatly, then biotic
competition must dominate, for no group can increase except at the expense of
others (while Kropotkin's underinhabited world can support more of any
population if, by mutual aid, their members can counteract environmental stress).
Darwin strongly subscribed to this version of the ancient principle of plenitude (see
p. 229), arguing from his favored Malthusian base that a population's geometric
capacity for growth guarantees the geologically instantaneous achievement of
optimal numbers: "From the high geometrical powers of increase of all organic
beings, each area is already fully stocked with inhabitants" (1859, p. 109).
METAPHORS OF COMPETITION. Since Darwin used metaphor so effectively, we
can often infer his primary commitments from his choice of images. Darwin, as
noted before, does cast a broad net in spreading "struggle" across