CHAPTER II 



THE EVOLUTION OF INDIVIDUALITY 



The Individual and its Environments The Creative Drift The 

 Increment of Mutual Service and Rightness in Evolution The 

 Growth Purpose in Nature-Action The Decrease of Chance and 

 the Increase of Compulsion Mutual Rights and Mutual Obliga- 

 tions and the Categorical Imperative to Existence The Egoism and 

 Altruism of Individuality The Ethics and Morality of Nature- 

 Action as a Guide to Individual Conduct The Components of 

 Individuality. 



I. The Individual and its Environments 



WE think of all such things as atoms, molecules, 

 plants, animals, society, the earth, or the solar system, 

 as more or less isolated things, or individualities, each 

 composed of other things, parts, or units, all moved 

 and organically held together by reciprocal, or cooper- 

 ative action. As we can form no concept of action save 

 in terms of material things, and no concept of struc- 

 ture without some coherent power, our impotence in 

 the face of fundamentals is at once exposed. Matter 

 and energy, time and space, themselves indefinable 

 save in terms of themselves, constitute, therefore, our 

 last mental refuge, our initial foothold and starting 

 point for the analysis of nature's grosser creative ways. 



As the universe is the environment of all it con- 

 tains, so the individual is the more immediate environ- 

 ment of all its constituent parts. All these different 

 environments, each one enclosing smaller individual- 

 ities within itself and each one itself enclosed in larger 



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