VITAL ACTION VS. NATURE-ACTION 193 



tion may not immediately follow error, or the failure 

 to attain these larger ends. The sentence, so to speak, 

 may be suspended, and a term of probation allowed 

 under the restrictions entailed by the error, till a new 

 sphere of usefulness is found. 



In many cases, however, the sources of failure- are 

 patent enough. It is the old story of little victories 

 big with defeat. Stories of over-service, or misdirected 

 service, or service that excludes cooperation, or will 

 not combine to give more service. Of unbalanced 

 growths that clog the channels of conveyance and shut 

 out the access of service. Armor of overgrown spine 

 and coat of mail that no longer support or protect, but 

 imprison, or crush to earth, or suffocate. Weapons of 

 overgrown tooth and nail, of hoof and claw, and horn 

 and spear, that no longer rightly strike, but compro- 

 mise with vain threats and useless lowerings, and cul- 

 minate, at last, in monstrous self-destroying burdens. 

 Service sinking to servitude, and acquisition to rapac- 

 ity, destroying both the master and the slave, the robber 

 and his prey. Cooperation swerving into competition, 

 and friendship into enmity, those fruitless cycles of 

 unending struggle between the pursuer and pursued, 

 seeker and hider, aggressor and defender; that have 

 no outlet but mutual destruction, or a deadlock of per- 

 petual reprisal. Over-stability that stagnates in immo- 

 bility, and over-freedom that rots in license. 



These types of organization were doomed to defeat 

 at the very outset of their career, for their methods of 

 cooperation were economically unsound, and inca- 

 pable of sustained progress. Their possibilities were 

 soon blockaded, or exhausted, resulting in endless repe- 



