406 LAWS OF MULTIPLICATION. 



of the species may be postponed long enough to allow of great 

 bulk and complex structure being attained. The procreative 

 subtraction then setting in, while it checks and presently 

 stops growth, maj'^ be so moderate as to leave vital capital 

 sufficient to carry on the activities of the parent ; may go 

 on as long as parental vigour suffices to furnish, without fatal 

 result, the materials needed to produce young ones ; and may 

 cease when such a surplus cannot be supplied, leaving the 

 parental life to continue. 



§ 326. The opposite side of this antagonism has also 

 several aspects. Progress of organic evolution may be shown 

 in increased bulk, in increased structure, in increased amount 

 or variety of action, or in combinations of these ; and under 

 any of its forms this carrying higher of each individualit}^, 

 implies a correlative retardation in the establishment of new 

 individualities. 



Other things equal, every addition to the bulk of an 

 organism is an augmentation of its life. Besides being an 

 advance in integration, it implies a greater total of acti- 

 vities gone through in the assimilation of materials ; and 

 it implies, thereafter, a greater total of the vital changes 

 taking place from moment to moment in all parts of the 

 enlarged mass. Moreover, while increased size is thus, in so 

 far, the expression of increased life, it is also, where the 

 organism is active, the expression of increased ability to 

 maintain life — increased strength. Aggregation of sub- 

 stance is almost the only mode in which self-preserving 

 power is shown among the lowest types ; and even 

 among the highest, sustaining the body in its integrity 

 is that in which self-preservation fundamentally consists — is 

 the end which the widest intelligence is indirectly made to 

 subserve. While, on the one hand, the increase of tissue 

 constituting growth is conservative both in essence and in 

 result ; on the other hand, decrease of tissue, either from 

 injury, disease, or old age, is in both essence and result the 



