INTRODUCTION xiii 



cumulative and progressive, there is but one all-pervad- 

 ing attribute of nature, namely, Tightness, which be- 

 comes manifest to us as constructive, or creative action, 

 or growth. 



All our catalogs, which enumerate and classify na- 

 ture's content according to structure and action; our 

 histories and genealogies, which trace the course and 

 measure the march of world events; our habitats and 

 environments, which circumscribe the centres of co- 

 operative activities, are our more formal ways of ex- 

 pressing the fact that nature is divergent, rhythmic, 

 and spasmodic in its creative progress, punctuated in 

 time and place by variations in the rate, kind, or de- 

 gree, of things created. 



In all these cases, the reciprocal egoism and altru- 

 ism, the creating and saving of self in order to give self 

 to some other creative act, is the essential process in 

 evolution. It is the perpetual source of nature's in- 

 creasing supplies and of her insatiable demands. It 

 is the basis of man's system of ethics and morality, 

 for in human affairs we call these same constructive 

 processes, righteousness, cooperation, altruism, service, 

 benevolence, and self-sacrifice. 



In setting forth my own mental attitude toward 

 nature, as a purely personal record, I shall speak, not 

 as a scientist in the conventions of science, fortifying one 

 opinion with another, that I cannot do, if I would, 

 nor yet as a biologist, bringing, in testimony, some 

 fresh revelation of the laboratory; but rather as one 

 at last compelled to act as secretary to his own disor- 

 dered state of mind; putting into order those thoughts 



