THE EVOLUTION OF INDIVIDUALITY 57 



ciated creatures, and as a member of human society. 

 For the unity and continuity of nature, and the inter- 

 changeability of her agents, excludes the presumption 

 of multiple standards of ethics and morality, one for 

 the living, another for the non-living world; one for 

 plants and animals, and another for man. 



Intelligence is the product of evolution. It has 

 no power to alter the methods that created it. It may 

 accelerate them, for it is quicker and surer than blind 

 trial and error in finding the right way to growth and 

 progress. To live more profitably than a plant or an 

 animal, man must use his own distinctive instrument 

 to find the creative way, and, finding it, he is compelled 

 to obey its dictates. He cannot refuse if he would. 



But yesterday, speaking of evolution, a distin- 

 guished, but an evidently perplexed biologist said to 

 me that he was satisfied to study life on a plot of ground 

 big enough to stand upon. That kind of intensive 

 study will doubtless keep some biologists happily en- 

 gaged as long as life is worthy of contemplation. But 

 it will be of little profit to him or to any one else, 

 unless some one stands over him, aids him, and directs 

 him in the common interests. For rightly to appraise 

 a point, or estimate the constructive value of a chromo- 

 some, man must needs have perspective. 



And when we do survey the world of varied things 

 about us on a comprehensive scale of time and space, 

 much of the meaningless detail and the apparent waste 

 vanish in creative investments. The fact which stands 

 out with convincing clearness is that nature in her evo- 

 lutionary convulsions always makes some permanent 

 constructive gain; that evolution is a progressive crea- 



