34 GRAND STRATEGY OF EVOLUTION 



whatever their nature may be, are brought into a defi- 

 nite time and space relation to one another, and then 

 act together cooperatively, a new thing appears, which 

 could not otherwise exist, having new qualities, new 

 cooperative powers of its own which did not previously 

 exist in its constituents. 



Chemical action is often set apart as something 

 quite different from all other activities because of its 

 familiar, instantaneous, creative power. Water, for 

 example, which is formed by the cooperative union 

 of hydrogen and oxygen has no resemblance to its iso- 

 lated constituents. It has very remarkable properties 

 of its own, and these new properties are of the greatest 

 cooperative value in world construction, for without 

 their peculiar services, terrestrial organization, proto- 

 plasm, and vital action, as we know them, would be 

 impossible. 



The difference between the creative power of chem- 

 ical cooperation and other forms of cooperation is in 

 the agents, periods of fruition, and results, not in their 

 basic methods. We are not accustomed to think of the 

 creative power of mass action, because we have no con- 

 venient way of measuring its progress or its products; 

 yet these products have properties as different from 

 their constituents as those of chemical action. A solar 

 system, for example, has attributes and powers that can- 

 not be defined, or measured in terms of its members, 

 or of its ultimate chemical elements, for a solar system 

 is not merely an aggregate, or the algebraic sum of its 

 various elements and qualities; it is something differ- 

 ent from any one of them, and something more than 

 all. It is a system, a new type of individuality with 



