THE EVOLUTION OF INDIVIDUALITY 53 



youthful stages of its existence; and by the measure to 

 which it can draw upon the profits of its colleagues and 

 upon the reserve capital of the world at large. 



The destruction of a thousand, or tens of thousands 

 of eggs, that one may live and grow, is not, as so 

 often assumed, evidence of nature's ruthlessness in 

 methods or purpose. No animal can be justly con- 

 victed of selfishness, that devotes, consciously or other- 

 wise, the most active periods of its life to the prepara- 

 tion of thousands of food-laden eggs, the better to in- 

 sure the welfare of another life yet to come. Rather 

 is it the convincing evidence of lavish parental benev- 

 olence to a future end, but a benevolence, it may be, 

 as yet undiscriminating in its methods of administra- 

 tion. Every living thing is absolutely dependent on 

 endowments of this character, endowments which are 

 nothing more or less than the organic surpluses, or 

 profits of individual life, conveyed with variable pre- 

 cision from one life to another. The countless eggs 

 and young that fail of their more specific purpose, de- 

 voured by predatory life, may still be regarded as resid- 

 uary legacies to life at large, unwilling though it may 

 be, nevertheless a legacy of otherwise unusable incre- 

 ments from one life to another. This undiscriminat- 

 ing benevolence is one of those universal interlocking 

 devices by which every individual life is in some meas- 

 ure sustained, devices without which the larger unity 

 and continuity of nature life would be impossible. 



Power itself, whether physical, organic, or intellec- 

 tual, is always a product of the cooperation of smaller 

 powers, and wholly meaningless except as an endow- 

 ment to further cooperative enterprises. And so also 

 it is with the altruistic idealism of man. It is a spir- 



