FACTORS IN CONSTRUCTIVE ACTION 37 



culiar way, is an altruistic servant to an ulterior crea- 1 

 tive act. 



Subscription to the Red Cross, to take another ex- 

 ample, may be a highly intelligent act, but it does not 

 fulfil its creative purpose till the whole machinery of 

 cooperative social life has been set in motion and the 

 right splints and bandages, the right foods and medi- 

 cines are put into the right places at the right time, 

 and the maimed and helpless in other ways are cared 

 for. Then and not till then, the disordered organism, 

 it may be, completes the long series of cooperative acts 

 by healing itself. Under the compulsion of these serv- 

 ices the ultimate saving and healing act is automatically 

 performed by the cooperative actions of the living tis- 

 sues and organs. 



But the full value of this elaborate system of Red 

 Cross conveyance does not lie alone in the resultant 

 saving of life and alleviation of human suffering, great 

 as that may be. It has far greater creative potentialities 

 than that. Its chief social value lies in the potential 

 creative power which is resident in the spontaneous or 

 voluntary service of man to man. This spontaneous 

 spirit of mutual service, always manifest in some 

 measure when men are rightly brought together, is the 

 chief attribute of man. It is the creating and saving 

 factor of human society and of all man's social insti- 

 tutions. 



All these creative acts, on analysis, resolve them- 

 selves into service and Tightness. What we call intelli- 

 gence may or may not be present. Nature's creative 

 methods and results are in no wise affected thereby. 

 Gravity, light, and chemical affinity, being what they 



