136 GRAND STRATEGY OF EVOLUTION 



flowing lives to other lives in different times and places. 

 Where the fountains and the tributaries of benevolence 

 are thus exposed, they may be more easily analyzed. 

 This is especially true of life's reproductive rhythm, 

 and of all those intermittent springs of life and death 

 which fill the reservoirs of nature's vital capital and 

 maintain their brimming measures. 



III. The Entail System in Sexual Reproduction 



Sooner or later every individual organism meets 

 internal conditions which automatically check and ul- 

 timately prohibit the continuity of life in that par- 

 ticular individual. These conditions inevitably pro- 

 duce those disabilities of maturity which culminate 

 in senility and death. 



Life as a whole is sustained, and has been sustained 

 through ages past, by countless renewals, that is by 

 the generation of new living individuals to take the 

 place of those about to die. But these new individuals 

 do not start from the very beginning, or from an initial 

 condition like that whence the first life sprang. They 

 start from a new base, from a definitely attained van- 

 tage point, the germinal cell, the egg, or seed, far be- 

 yond the initial one, and aided, it may be, by an elabo- 

 rate equipment for the nourishment, protection, guid- 

 ance, and discipline of the new life. 



From these new starting points, it is possible for 

 such things as a flower, a polyp, insect, fish, or human 

 being, to reproduce with unfailing precision, in a few 

 days, months, or years, new individuals very much 

 like themselves, although it required many millions 



