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forces ; statesmen solemnly enact international laws for 

 the regulation of the laws of nature, and great defensive 

 wars might be heroically waged over some menace to 

 ancient prerogatives, over freedom of action, or over 

 local differences of opinion as to which particular vari- 

 ation of the procedure was right and which was wrong. 

 There is no limit to the chain of cooperative fitness and 

 adaptation, that might be linked up in this way, so long 

 as every link in the chain was self-sustaining. 



But the naturalist is familiar with many cases in 

 the organic world of reality, where the machinery that 

 develops around a given function ultimately outgrows 

 its purpose and defeats its own aim, like "vaulting am- 

 bition that o'erleaps itself and falls on the other"; or 

 like an animal whose defensive armor, by overgrowth, 

 becomes a prison, or a killing burden; or like one that 

 destroys itself and the sources of its own maintenance 

 by over-greediness; or as in man where over-physical, 

 or over-intellectual development, may each destroy the 

 other and thereby defeat their individual and their 

 common purposes. 



So in the case of the hypothetical society we are con- 

 sidering, it would be of little moment which social 

 group was right, and which was wrong on any partic- 

 ular question, or which nation had evolved the more 

 "kultur," or had the more elaborate civilization, art, 

 science, or literature, if one of them concealed within 

 itself some basic moral, or cooperative, defect. Only 

 that one could endure, wherein the real purpose of all 

 this social machinery of mutual services is rightly ac- 

 complished, that is, in this particular case, when lovers 

 are cooperatively united, and the ultimate messengers 

 of love safely reach their destination. 



