54 GRAND STRATEGY OF EVOLUTION 



itual endowment from the one to the many, for its fruits 

 mature for those who have it not rather than for those 

 who do. Idealism is in truth based on realities and 

 endures because of its saving services and creative 

 power. It is their clearer vision of the creative drift 

 which impels the leaders of men to take their 

 characteristic expectant mental attitude, rightly ori- 

 ented to face the life-giving currents of world events. 

 This positive orientation of leadership to world prog- 

 ress, this idealism, is the mother of practicality, for it is 

 the explorer, the pioneer, the long-range director, and 

 hence the benefactor of mankind in all creative intel- 

 lectual movements. But egoism, or self-aggrandize- 

 ment and self-preservation, the effort to attain the 

 fullest freedom of self-expression, always has been, 

 and doubtless always will be, the primary law of evo- 

 lution. It is a basic condition to progress because in 

 that way only can the necessary instruments to progress 

 be preserved. Self-sacrifice and benevolence, or the 

 giving of self in cooperative action to a larger end, is 

 a secondary law; but secondary in sequence only, not 

 in dignity, nor in creative power. Self-sacrifice is a 

 higher law only in that it pertains to higher levels of 

 progress; for it in turn depends on the utilization of 

 the fruits of egoistic action. In other words, self-pre- 

 servation is not the end and aim of creative power, but 

 merely the necessary means to a larger creative result. 

 The individual saves itself in order that it may give 

 itself to a larger purpose. The fulness and variety of 

 these products of self-preservation constitute the con- 

 structive endowments of nature. 



In the social life of man, commerce, literature, and 

 art, as well as science and religion, are all common car- 



