1 92 GRAND STRATEGY OF EVOLUTION 



brates appeared, yet they and all their descendants are 

 still moving in essentially the same cycles of growth 

 and reproduction, and on the same low level of vital 

 organization, as before, while the descendants of the 

 tribe of arachnids, and fishes, out of like environments 

 of seas and shores, have soared into man. 



The tunicates, the sea-urchin, and the sea-lily are 

 still leading a semi-vegetative existence, doing essen- 

 tially the same kind of things, with essentially the same 

 kind of organs, in much the same kind of surroundings, 

 that they did many millions of years ago, standing ex- 

 amples of organic defeat through too successful stabil- 

 ity. Still other types of organization have long since 

 ceased to exist. Their dead frames are living evidence 

 that "that way madness lies," for extinction is na- 

 ture's "reductio ad absurdum" to all upright enter- 

 prises. 



Failure of individual life to make sustained prog- 

 ress is due, therefore, to some defect, or failure, in in- 

 ternal organization. With further growth, these de- 

 fects are revealed; the weaker bonds are severed; co- 

 operation fails, or service "o'erleaps itself and falls on 

 the other." 



Nature's highways and byways are strewn with the 

 wreckage of dead, stalled, or stranded enterprises that 

 have been checked, or defeated, through failure to meet 

 some one of the fundamental demands of a sustaining 

 unity. We may not be able to detect the flaws in meth- 

 ods, or materials, nor for our present purpose is it in- 

 cumbent upon us to do so, for the specific enterprise 

 which reveals no measurable progress on the clock of 

 ages sufficiently testifies to its own defeat. Destruc- 



