42 GRAND STRATEGY OF EVOLUTION 



tinuous creative process which flows out of an unlim- 

 ited past, through the present, into a limitless future. 

 While infinitely varied in local expression, in its larger 

 phases this process persistently maintains a common 

 direction, or drift, which may be expressed by the word 

 progress. Progress, unlike time and space, is not uni- 

 form throughout, or isotropic. Like a living organism 

 it is the expression of a graded absolute change, as well 

 as of relative changes ; it has dimensions and symmetry, 

 a beginning and an ending, a head end and a tail end, as 

 it were, which differ in their products. Progress, there- 

 fore, like a growing organism or a social institution, 

 can be measured only in graded terms of things suc- 

 cessively created. 



As we extend our concept of progress by looking 

 farther and farther into the past toward the beginning 

 of all things, the complex and varied individualities 

 of today appear ultimately to dissolve, setting all their 

 constituent elements free. Cooperation, apparently, 

 then vanishes in the nullifying conflict of universal 

 "freedom," and all nature assumes the primordial sim- 

 plicity, continuity and uniformity of elemental chaos. 



Our first concept of individuality as something con- 

 sisting of groups of cooperating parts then gives way 

 to a new one, that of ultimate initial units, infinitely 

 small and infinite in numbers, but apparently finite in 

 kind; and yet another unit, or whole, that comprises 

 them all. 



This larger unit, or cosmos, is but an impotent, 

 meaningless aggregate, without real unity, unless we 

 assume that its constituents actually cooperate with one 

 another to that end. If they do not, the unity, if such 



