Chapter 3: Struggle For Existence Summary and Analysis

This chapter discusses the fact that all organisms are engaged in a constant competition with one another, with their habitats, and with their climates, for survival. The primary cause for this struggle is the fact that organisms produce at rapid rates and the world could not possibly sustain all of the organisms that were thus produced. Therefore, some—in fact, even most—must die off.

The reason it is necessary to discuss the "struggle for existence" is that it is the primary force behind natural selection, which will be discussed in later chapters. In the case of artificial selection, which was discussed in Chapter 1, the intentions of humans were the primary forces that caused plants and animals to accumulate certain kinds of traits and change gradually over time into different forms in life...