38 GRAND STRATEGY OF EVOLUTION 



are, could not create anything in any other way than 

 they do, even if they were intelligent agents rightly 

 performing creative services; and human intelligence 

 cannot act creatively without rightly using these physi- 

 cal attributes. Or, to put it in another way, atoms and 

 molecules, in their constructive processes, act as they 

 would have to act if they were intelligent agents. 



What we call benevolence is the giving of some- 

 thing to something else. It cannot be accomplished 

 unless that something is first created and then conveyed 

 across time and space to something else. If this giving 

 and receiving is rightly done, a new creative act takes 

 place. Human intellience cannot modify or qualify 

 this final act in any way; it merely serves as a supple- 

 mentary instrument to guide these agencies into, con- 

 structive channels. 



A mother bird, a prosaic hen, for example, gives 

 herself, her life and bodily powers, to storing up food 

 and germ plasma in an egg, out of which, with the co- 

 operation of the opposite sex, comes the next genera- 

 tion. This is altruism; something done, something 

 sacrificed, for something else, intelligence or no intel- 

 ligence. To do so is of no advantage to that particular 

 bird, or to her mate; but nevertheless they could not 

 have come into being without this system of mutual 

 services. They would not have acted differently, or 

 the result have been different, in those respects, if they 

 had used benevolent foresight and intelligence. Per- 

 haps the same result might have been attained more 

 surely and economically for the hen and her chickens, 

 if the process had been guided by a more selfish in- 

 telligence; but in that case the prodigal hen would not 

 have been as serviceable to man, or to other animals. 



