58 GRAND STRATEGY OF EVOLUTION 



tive process. The monuments to nature's creative 

 strategy, wherein victory is expressed in growth and 

 organization, are in us and all about us. 



To say that evolution is' unethical or unmoral is to 

 destroy the basic value of the terms by arbitrary limi- 

 tations to their meaning. It carries the assumption 

 that human conduct stands in a domain apart and that 

 the agencies which influence man to his own welfare 

 and profit are different in kind from those which con- 

 trol the constituents of his body, or those of animals 

 and plants, or those of inanimate nature. And if right- 

 ness and morality are divorced from all physical agen- 

 cies, or from the results of their acts, then the terms 

 have no tangible meaning whatever. 



We are therefore compelled to assume that since 

 evolution is a progressive creative process, the things 

 that do act constructively act rightly. That, it is true, 

 gives us no definition of what Tightness really is, other 

 than that it is the constructive, or creative way of doing 

 things. That is the way in which we shall use the 

 term. 



We shall use the terms morality, behavior, conduct, 

 or constructive action in the same broad way. It may 

 sound strange to speak of the morals of an atom, or of 

 the way in which a molecule conducts itself. But in 

 the last analysis, science can draw no fundamental dis- 

 tinction between the conduct of an animal, a bullet, or 

 a freshman, although there may be more unknown fac- 

 tors involved in one case than in the other. The things 

 that chiefly concern us, as scientists, or as teachers, or 

 as laymen, are the questions : What makes things act 

 as they do? What are the acts they in turn produce, 

 and how can man profit by that knowledge? In so 



