64^ Causes and Course of Organic Evolution 



the telegraph, the cable, and the Marconigraph system; have 

 all existed first as successively advancing summations of stim- 

 uli that were united into several resultants, and these again, 

 compoimded by the ganglionic cells of highest capacity, have 

 cumulated into one proenvironal effort after another till all 

 have combined into a climax of easy international commercial 

 intercourse that is wide as the world, and that influences di- 

 rectly or indirectly the great mass of humanity. 



And verily each such proenvironal advance meant for many 

 human beings the formation of an entirely new environment 

 around them, which in some cases has operated for their bene- 

 fit, in other cases for their injury as human animals of highest 

 type. The thousands of men who now live daily amid clanging 

 hammers, creaking or grinding machinery, molten metal, hot 

 furnaces, factory noise and dust, afford proof that the law of 

 proenvironment, when put in operation as a material response, 

 may in turn start environal forces and combinations that are 

 absolutely new to evolving mankind, but which by no means 

 conduce always to improvement of the individual. 



And so in turn the workers who use the hands, or the masters 

 who exploit the hands, have in turn to miite in proenvironing 

 rules or laws that shall safeguard the worker, or invent im- 

 proved machines or conditions that will overcome unhealthy 

 conditions. Here therefore the brutal law of survival of the 

 fittest may be modified and even overcome by the greatly 

 nobler law of cooperation, that man is "powerfully taught the 

 benefit of, from the animals below him who have become the suc- 

 cessful survivors. 



We can next consider another proenvironal advance that 

 is fraught with highest issues for the human race of today. 

 The more rapidly each civilized nation advances, the more 

 vigorously does it push forward its system of education. Why, 

 it may be asked, does each child go to school, why do his pa- 

 rents, his city, his nation compel him to go.^ The usual answer 

 is a familiar one, and need not be given here. 



The child goes — sometimes reluctantly it must be confessed 

 — because it is admonished on every side that years hence 



