68 The Universe and Life 



in a complex and deceptive world. This is true for all 

 organisms ; for amoeba as for man. 



Thus from the beginning life is a task, a problem 

 to be solved, a course of action to be determined; it 

 requires management. Successful living, in amoeba 

 and in man, involves long trains of behavior, directed 

 toward assuring conditions that are favorable and 

 warding off those that are unfavorable. The penalty 

 for making wrong choices, the penalty for inaccuracy 

 and inadequacy in the reactions to the outer condi- 

 tions, is destruction, with the cutting off of the line 

 of advance represented by the individuals that fail. 

 Such destruction through incorrect behavior occurs 

 on a vast scale ; perhaps a majority of the individuals 

 that begin life are thus destroyed. 



In those that succeed and thus continue to exist 

 and to perpetuate their line of advance, the inner 

 processes and structures come to be more complex 

 and more and more completely and accurately corre- 

 lated with what occurs outside; selectivity becomes 

 more and more precise and efficient. As the organisms 

 rise higher in the scale, the kinds of things to which 

 they react become more numerous and the relations 

 sought for more refined. At first they search in the 

 main for food and flee in the main from immediately 

 destructive agents. But almost at the very beginning 

 there exist also special relations to their fellows, even 

 in the infusorian there is mating and parenthood and 

 still other relations with individuals of their own kind. 

 In the higher animals, in man, the situation has be- 

 come extremely complex, with almost an infinity of 



