134 GRAND STRATEGY OF EVOLUTION 



life profits by its living and confers on its colleagues 

 and offspring something more of constructive right- 

 ness than it received. It must mean that the system of 

 conservation and endowment, that the constructive 

 value of gifts and the range of their influences, and 

 the power of conveying mutual services, grows, or in- 

 creases. 



This nature-growth, or evolution, is not so evident 

 in the increased power of the individual itself, great 

 as that may be, as it is in the accumulated endowments 

 of nature's organized capital thereby made available 

 for its uses. 



II. The Merging of Egoism and Altruism into Or- 

 ganization, and Its Emergence as the Augmented 

 Altruism of Larger Individuals 



The reciprocal process of self-creating and self- 

 giving merges imperceptibly into cooperative action, 

 into organization, and the creation of larger individ- 

 ualities. The giving and receiving tends to react profit- 

 ably upon the giver and receiver and to unite more 

 and more intimately the ego and the alter, into one. 



When benevolence attains its higher stages, it be- 

 comes more and more difficult sharply to distinguish 

 between its different phases and their constructive re- 

 sults, or purposes; that is, between the self-creating 

 and the self-giving; between the gifts and their con- 

 veyors, or their possessors; between the creating, the 

 receiving, and the using of the gifts ; between the com- 

 mon profits derived from the transaction and their con- 

 structive value to any one or more of the agents in- 

 volved. 



