AGENCIES, HABITAT, AND GROWTH 89 



and environment; freedom to play, to experiment, or 

 explore, and to follow the never-ending labyrinth of 

 life and hope renewed that opens up before its prog- 

 ress. It is this special franchise of individual liberty, 

 within a universal prison, that is the joy of life and its 

 guiding hand. 



Thus each atom and each cell has a specific measure 

 of freedom within the sanctuary wherein it exists. 

 Through the exercise of that freedom of action it 

 tests and explores its environment and finds the ways 

 that lead to more constructive action. The same free- 

 dom, for the same purpose, is given to the organ, indi- 

 vidual, species, family, state, and nation. 



Thus in all stages of life, freedom and bondage, 

 variation and stability, the radical and the conserva- 

 tive, work together for progress. Discipline and re- 

 straint conserve the old ways; freedom finds the new. 



VI. The Growth of Freedom 



But the barriers within which life resides are not 

 impregnable. In its traffic with nature, life is free to 

 look beyond its tenement walls ; free to receive direc- 

 tive agencies from afar, and thereby free to enlarge 

 its heritage. By this universal attribute of profitable 

 exchange, life grows in volume and complexity. Its 

 increase in volume by assimilation is merely the in- 

 crease of its servant organs; and the greater the pre- 

 cision and the power of life's organic machinery, the 

 freer are life's bodily movements, the wider is the range, 

 and the more rapid the rate of its exchange. And as 

 they increase, the prison walls of life recede. The win- 

 dows which look out on the universe, and which admit 



