i 5 2 GRAND STRATEGY OF EVOLUTION 



man's activities, other than those of his mere muscular, 

 or combative, or reproductive powers, was greatly in- 

 creased ; and human society, rather than the family, or 

 the class, became the beneficiary of these labors. 



That is to say, in human society the expenditure of 

 parental labor to construct a home, a storehouse, high- 

 way, or machine; to domesticate the land and make it 

 safe for family life is so much vital power conserved 

 in human properties, as maternal labor is conserved in 

 egg-yolk, or as sunlight is in coal. 



This over-constructiveness of parent life survives, 

 locked in the reservoirs of social culture, long after the 

 producer has ceased to be. It is then no less a vital 

 part of the body social, than it was a part, before, of 

 parent life. And in due season other workers add more 

 constructions to it, whereof the identity of the giver, 

 like a grain of starch in the granary of seed, is lost 

 in the assembling of the common store. These ma- 

 terial properties therefore are to social life, as are to 

 racial life the fats and oils assembled round the germ. 

 They are the mingled, unspent profits of individual 

 laborers; their surplus constructive capital overflow- 

 ing into social reservoirs as a social heritage. Accu- 

 mulating in the tissues of the body politic, they insure 

 stability and continuity to social life, and a rising level 

 of constructive capital to build upon. 



So also it is with man's discoveries of nature's con- 

 structive capital in the bounteous outer world, the in- 

 ventions for its better usage, and those betterments in 

 social conduct which add to social life new powers of 

 regeneration. All these rare fruits of exploration and 

 experience are discoveries in constructive Tightness 

 made by individual human beings, chiefly in the ex- 



