178 GRAND STRATEGY OF EVOLUTION 



latioris with things it could not before utilize, or with 

 new agencies which for it did not before exist. 



V. Architectural Values and Cooperative Balance 



From every main line of progress, many side 

 branches or collateral lines of evolution arise. The 

 point where a larger or smaller branch diverges from 

 the main stem represents a period when some particu- 

 lar method of growth, or building material, or habitat, 

 was definitely adopted; and the number and extent of 

 the secondary branches arising therefrom represent the 

 constructive products of that experiment, and testify to 

 the creative possibilities of the change. 



Any estimate of these gains must be based on all 

 three of the fundamental requirements of organic prog- 

 ress, i.e. (i) increase in content, or volume; (2) im- 

 provements in internal administration; and (3) im- 

 provement in external administration. Increase in any 

 one respect is largely dependent on the other two ; but 

 increase in volume is the less restrained, the more prim- 

 itive, or the initial one of the three processes. It tends 

 to exceed the other two, and in excess automatically 

 checks their progress. On the other hand, successful 

 inventions in administration accelerate growth in vol- 

 ume which ultimately neutralizes the effects of the 

 invention and restores a new cooperative balance. 



Thus any condition which disturbs the pre-exist- 

 ing methods of cooperative action checks or releases the 

 ever-lurking powers of growth, and leads to over-pro- 

 duction or under-production, the result of which may 

 be either organic stability, or decadent evolution, or 

 extinction. 



