1 82 GRAND STRATEGY OF EVOLUTION 



VI. The Divergent Architecture and Cooperative 

 Unity of Plant and Animal Life 



In its upbuilding from a common beginning, life 

 has found, strangely enough, but two main lines of 

 architecture open to it, the plant line and the animal 

 line. 



This basic duality of life is the more impressive in 

 view of the multiplicity of structural types in the do- 

 mains of purely physical and chemical phenomena. In 

 no other domain of nature are there two such distinct 

 classes of phenomena, each standing so much apart 

 architecturally, yet each so complemental function- 

 ally to the other. Therein lies the secret of this archi- 

 tectural duality, for the mutually sustaining attributes 

 of plants and animals, like those of the male and fe- 

 male sex, are of such a character that neither could 

 exist without the other, and neither could alone per- 

 form the work of both. Thus plants and animals cre- 

 ate a common life, held together, not in formal archi- 

 tectural unity, but in labile cooperative action. 



The distinctive inventions of plant and animal life 

 have been persistently followed up, and apparently ex- 

 ploited to their utmost possibilities. 



For every plant and every animal, blindly or other- 

 wise, seeks to avoid that which is destructive to it, and 

 failing, dwindles away, or vanishes in extinction. 

 Every plant and every animal, aimlessly or otherwise, 

 seeks out and tests every nook and cranny of fitting 

 opportunity for further growth, and finding it, the fur- 

 ther grows, the more firmly holds to the more enduring 

 help, to the more saving shelters of the world at large, 

 and to their more bounteous conveyors ; fitting itself to 



