BENEVOLENCE AND DISCIPLINE 141 



endowments to a new life is the active working capital, 

 or quick assets, in which the vital spark is laid. 



It is a highly concentrated food, freely available 

 for immediate consumption, and specially prepared 

 by the parents (not intentionally of course, although 

 the result is the same) to meet the first demands of the 

 new life. Although stored up inside the egg in the 

 form of fats, and oils, and proteids, etc., and although 

 it may be mingled with the germ, it does not form an 

 organic part of the germ, at least not more so than with 

 man, buildings, food supplies, and bank accounts, form 

 an organic part of the heir that makes use of them. 

 Like man's inherited estates, it represents the conserved 

 surplus products, 7 or profits, of organic parental labor; 

 it is a parental surplus which, rightly utilized, insures 

 the continuity and progress of its own life. This 

 transfer of parental profits to the egg ensures the other- 

 wise helpless embryo against starvation and accidents. 

 It facilitates the processes of self-construction; recti- 

 fies and accelerates growth by placing beforehand the 

 right materials in the right places for the constructive 

 usage of the embryo. To each new life, it obviates, for 

 the time being, the necessity and the otherwise insuper- 

 able dangers of having to discover, by itself alone, the 

 right way to live. 



There is no more impressive aspect of evolution f 

 than the progressive increase in the volume of this* 

 working capital, as well as in its Tightness, or in the 

 improvements in its timeliness, placement, and quali- 

 ties. In its mere volume and in its power to provision 

 a long developmental journey, the food materials which 

 are stored up in the egg of the higher animals, a bird 



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