70 GRAND STRATEGY OF EVOLUTION 



alone. It includes their larger cooperative values. 

 Man receives far more basic services from yeast and 

 potato than from the orchid and gives far more thought 

 and labor to them in order to provide the ways and 

 means to set their powers free. 



In spite of its extraordinary adaptations, the orchid 

 does not have a particularly strong hold on life. Its 

 profits and losses are apparently too evenly balanced to 

 endure except under most favorable circumstances. Its 

 most characteristic inventions for living suggest the 

 marvels of the patent office rather than the homely 

 devices of approved utility. These wonderful inven- 

 tions work, sometimes, but not surely, nor economically. 



Sexual life abounds in these bizarre inventions, for 

 sex, especially in social life, must carry an enormous, 

 and ever growing amount of baggage, and heavy 

 draughts must be made on the resources of life to keep 

 this baggage moving and self-supporting. 



When these properties of sex grow too cumbersome 

 for the essential journeys of life, or their administra- 

 tion too costly, they become self-destructive burdens, 

 defeating the very purpose they serve. If, under such 

 conditions, the organism still endures, it is in spite of 

 their extravagances rather than because of them. 



The subtle influence of sex is felt in all phases of 

 life, high and low, constituting a basic and all pervad- 

 ing vital motive. Indeed the consummation of the 

 sexual function is the primal obligation of life, and in 

 its services are enlisted, as propaganding lures and 

 stimuli, the chief pleasures and ornaments of life. Nor 

 would we have it otherwise. But when these secondary 

 characters and functions usurp the resources of life to 

 no effect, when they pervert, or inhibit, the primal func- 



