THE EVOLUTION OF INDIVIDUALITY 55 



riers in a benevolent creative service. They are vehi- 

 cles which know no barriers, individual, local, racial, 

 or national. Their limitations are in their own powers 

 of conveyance and in the power of the recipients to 

 utilize their gifts. But that does not mean that the 

 idiosyncrasies of time and place, of race, or quality, or 

 nation, can or should be dissolved, or equalized. On 

 the contrary, they should always retain that egoism 

 which gives them individuality. For if different social 

 or national units are not preserved, and their unlike 

 qualities emphasized, or given adequate freedom of self- 

 expression, they cannot be utilized as cooperative parts 

 of larger individualities; there would be no resources 

 for future reorganizations on an international scale. 



From this point of view, "fitness" has a new and a 

 deeper meaning. The "fittest" is not merely 'the one 

 most likely to survive because it cooperates best to its 

 own selfish ends; it means something more than that. 

 In this deeper meaning of the term, the fittest is the one 

 which, in its survival, provides the means to a new and 

 a still larger end. The "struggle for existence" is a 

 struggle of the individual to find the right way out of 

 the obstructive conditions created by its own growth 

 and by that of other individuals, in order to give itself 

 to a larger life. 



Thus the larger purpose in life and evolution, the 

 ever receding goal of all endeavor, is escape from the 

 older bondage into the newer bondage of a larger serv- 

 ice. 



This universal give and take for some ulterior con- 

 structive act; this self-surrender of individualities in 

 order to make larger and more enduring individuali- 

 ties; this investment of self in a purpose beyond self, 



