Note 1 — PRELUDE: MORNING ON MOOSEHEAD

“I use this term [struggle] in a large and metaphorical sense, including dependence of one being on another, and including success in leaving off spring.” (Darwin, Origin of Species sixth London edition, page 59). This loose definition of the metaphor—which makes the baby playing with his toes a struggler because he depends on his mother, and which makes the guinea hen a better struggler than the eagle because one lays fifty eggs and the other only two—shows the absurdity of the whole struggle notion. All illustrations used by Darwin, such as the succession of forest trees, are of the same loosely-metaphorical kind. So long as English words have any meaning, there is no more “struggle” in the growth or death of forest trees than in waking to healthy life at the call of the sun or in going to sleep in the drowsy twilight.