50 GRAND STRATEGY OF EVOLUTION 



compulsion and of specific opportunities, or what we 

 call law and order, is one of the chief characteristics 

 of evolution. It is due to the cumulative stabilizing 

 power of cooperative action. It is an automatic, pro- 

 gressive process, growing by incorporating into itself 

 its own profits. 



VI. Mutual Rights and Mutual Obligations and the 

 Categorical Imperative to Existence 



The very factors which create one individual, in 

 doing so may prohibit, destroy, or create many others. 

 Thus "good" and "evil" always have a limited, or 

 tentative value when applied at a particular time or 

 place, or to a particular individual. But since all these 

 individualities, large or small, simple or complex, are 

 nature's sole instruments for the creation of other, 

 larger, or still more complex individualities, their crea- 

 tion and preservation is an essential preliminary to 

 progress, or to the attainment of a larger end by more 

 comprehensive methods. The larger values of good 

 and evil, therefore, are revealed only in the larger 

 creative results. 



Thus the "rights" of all the varied individualities 

 of nature to security and to the full expression of their 

 individuality rest on the fact that their power of self- 

 expression represents nature's accrued creative profits 

 in those investments. The aggregate of those profits, 

 at a given time, represents nature's only available capital 

 for constructive services in other enterprises. An essen- 

 tial condition to progress, therefore, is the creation of 

 diverse individualities, and the safe-guarding of their 



