52 GRAND STRATEGY OF EVOLUTION 



past generation, while liberating religious thought, 

 initiated a strong intellectual movement away from 

 the "impracticable idealism" of an "artificial" social 

 system, toward the so-called "realities" of a larger 

 world life, and led to the widespread worship of a new 

 God, a fictitious Nature-God, created by the biolo- 

 gists in the image of their own distorted mentality. 

 The present over-emphasis of selfishness and the clash- 

 ing of moral and intellectual purposes in social life 

 are chiefly due to this error. The violation of the finer 

 moral instincts incident to the practice of these teach- 

 ings is condoned on the ground that selfishness is a 

 necessary condition to social progress, and the misuse 

 of power is justified by an appeal to the ruthless struggle 

 for existence and the dominion of force in nature. But 

 there is no justification whatever for such an appeal. 

 Ruthlessness and selfishness there is in nature, on every 

 hand, but they are no more creative and preservative 

 there than in human society. In fact, as we shall pres- 

 ently show in more detail, in all her constructive pro- 

 cesses nature is preeminently altruistic and benevolent. 

 Her creative power and her power of sustained pro- 

 gress is wholly dependent on her multitudinous sys- 

 tems of organized endowments. 



Every living thing, for example, is dependent on the 

 mutually beneficial acts of its own internal organs. 

 Every living thing receives from nature at large and 

 from its forebears the initial impulses and germinal ma- 

 terials that give it life and being. Every living thing 

 is insured against the inevitable hazards of a complex 

 world by the measure of food given to it in embryonic 

 life by its parents; by the measure of parental forag- 

 ing, protection, and foresight devoted to it during the 



