THE EVOLUTION OF A CREATIVE ENVIRONMENT. 455 



fore, are evolved simultaneously and inseparably, and they become more and 

 more complex, interlocked with one another and with their innumerable constit- 

 uents, with the lapse of time. 



It is important to distinguish, more sharply than is usually done, between the 

 various kinds of environment, and the parts they play in the production of new 

 structures and organisms; between the environments that create, and those that 

 are prohibitory, or exclusive, or merely permissive. 



Consider, for example, a simple case, such as ice. There are three essential 

 factors involved in its production, or creation: i. The inherent nature of the 

 hydrogen and oxygen of which it is composed; 2. the relation of the two elements 

 to each other as to time, space, and quantity, and 3. the conditions as to pressure, 

 temperature, etc. When all three factors, i.e., materials, time, space and quan- 

 tity relations, and environment, are in a definite adjustment, ice appears, or is 

 produced, or created. If some animal, or other agent, devours or destroys the 

 ice as fast as it is created, or prevents the act of creation, we may add a fourth 

 factor as essential to the creation or the existence of ice, namely 4. the absence of 

 an excluding, or destructive agent. 



The first and second factors include the materials and their distribution; 

 the third and fourth are external, and are primarily distinct from the materials 

 or their distribution; they constitute the environment. Only one factor may be 

 assumed to be permanent, or at any rate relatively permanent, that which con- 

 stitutes the quality or nature of the materials, or simply the materials themselves. 

 All other factors are constantly changing or fluctuating. The second and third 

 factors may be properly considered creative factors in the sense that when they 

 prevail, ice, a different thing from what previously existed, appears. In no sense 

 can ice be said to have been present in, or to have pre-existed in either the ma- 

 terials, H and O, or in the creative conditions. The fourth class of factors may 

 be neutral or permissive, exclusive or prohibitory, but under no conditions 

 creative. 



Thus, reduced to its simplest terms, the command of materials and of their 

 relations to each other as to time, space, and quantity, and the command of 

 environment, constitute creative power. 



All aggregations of material create for the aggregate, and for each of its com- 

 ponents, new directive and controlling conditions. This is true whether we are 

 dealing with the aggregation of elements to form water, or proteids, or mixtures of 

 proteids. The aggregation of cosmic materials to form the earth has produced 

 new conditions that created the land, and sea, and atmosphere, rivers, mountains, 

 valleys and soil, and gave to each in turn its power to direct and control, and to 

 create anew. All vital, organic growth is of this nature, except that its income and 

 outgo are more accurately balanced and its sphere of activity more minutely 

 localized. 



The geologist interprets the growth of the earth by its change of form and 

 by the distribution of its materials, and seeks to correlate its structure at a given 



