Harmony and Conflict in the Living World - Alexander F. Skutch [26]
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colored by appropriate emotions, the chief of which, love, is the most powerful agent of concord among individuals. The whole reproductive process, in its physical no less than in its psychic aspects, is a masterpiece of harmonization in the living world.
The intrusion of disruptive, hostile passions and behavior into this realm of subtle and delicate adjustments is one of the great paradoxes of animal life, explicable only when we understand how sexual rivalry is related to the deadlier conflict between predator and prey. The strife stirred up by the carnivorous habit finally insinuated itself into the intimate internal relations of each affected species, whether of predatory animals or their victims. Among the former, any system that would make the strongest and most pugnacious males most successful in winning mates and fathering offspring would help the race to attain maximum efficiency in running down and overpowering its prey. Among the latter, the selection of the hardiest and boldest males as sires would result in progeny better able to escape their pursuers by sustained flight or even to confront them when the presence of defenseless young made retreat inexpedient.
Accordingly, natural selection promoted the fierce competition among the males of many mammals and other animals that tends to deprive the weaker or less enduring individuals of a share in reproducing their kind, while the more powerful ones pass on their size and vigor to the next generation. And this fighting, as Darwin recognized, led indirectly to the origination or further development both of horns, antlers, tusks, claws, spurs, and other offensive weapons and of tough skin, carapaces, capes of feathers, manes, and other protective coverings, no less than to the increase of sheer bulk, strength, and endurance in the contestants. Much of this offensive and defensive armament helps the animals that wear it, in their encounters with hereditary enemies as well as in duels with rivals of their own kind. But perhaps the energy and determination needed for the effective use of this equipment in intrasexual struggles is, in the long run, of greater value to the species than the often clumsy and bizarre excrescences themselves. Thus, the
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strife between predator and prey abetted sexual fighting, which by selecting the victors to become parents made this strife ever more savage.
By so long and devious a path has the impulsion toward harmony of which life is a product become entangled in antagonistic habits and attitudes, been armed with a vast array of aggressive and protective devices; until, regarding the living world superficially, one might suppose that discord rather than concord, war rather than peace, is its fundamental character and prime necessity. But an intimate study of its origin and nature reveals that this conclusion is false. Disharmony can never be more than froth upon the deep current of life. A system of relations so extensive and intricate remains intact solely by virtue of the harmony that pervades it; to saturate it with strife is to ensure its dissolution. In structures, in functions, in emotions, harmony is the pulsating heart of life; discord, the armor its puts on to confront the world. And from this discord, growing out of the physical problems of life, moral evil at last arose when, after millions of years of slow evolution, humankind became capable of foreseeing the future and