Charles Darwin defined The Law of the Jungle as “the principle that those who are strong and apply ruthless self-interest will be most successful”. The jungle is a place full of competition and individuals fighting for their survival where species defend their spot in the food chain and participate in the race of evolution.
But The Law of the Jungle which Rudyard Kipling introduced in The Jungle Book is completely different. Kipling’s laws were a set of codes that animals must follow to coexist. Instead of individualism and competition, in Kipling’s version of the law species survived by fulfilling their natural obligations and inter-species social cooperation.
Kipling wrote a poem on The Law of the Jungle that read: “Now this is the Law of the Jungle, as old and as true as the sky. And the Wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the Wolf that shall break it must die. The strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack”.
And the question remains: Whose view of the natural world is right?
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