194 GRAND STRATEGY OF EVOLUTION 



tition; in labyrinthine meanderings through a maze 

 of shifting, short-lived opportunities; in vain flutter- 

 ings against a dead wall of circumstance. They never 

 have found the open road to progress, and if youth, after 

 untold millions of years and opportunities, could not 

 find the way through, over, under, or around, it is not 

 likely that old age will be able to do so; for organic 

 evolution stiffens with age; it never can shake off its 

 past, nor change its initial structure and manner of do- 

 ing things. It is, therefore, life's cooperative response 

 to the outer world through the medium of its own spe- 

 cific architecture, not the architecture of the external 

 world, that primarily determines the duration and ef- 

 ficiency of organic life. Cosmic environment, from 

 the earlier phases of organic evolution, has been prac- 

 tically stable and broadly permissive for all kinds of 

 life, provided life could find the right ways to use it. 

 But the economic, or social environment has greatly 

 increased in complexity as a result of the increasing 

 numbers and internal development of individual life. 

 Hence all living things must first conform to the de- 

 mands of their cosmic environment, next to the de- 

 mands of their own internal structure, and ultimately 

 to the demands of their social environment. But social 

 environment is more plastic, its demands are less im- 

 perative, more yielding, and more readily avoided than 

 those of the other two. Hence all the older structural 

 types have survived great social changes; few could 

 survive a considerable change in internal organization; 

 and no form of life could survive a radical change in 

 its cosmic environments, such as heat, light, oxygen, 

 diameter of earth, etc. 



