198 GRAND STRATEGY OF EVOLUTION 



right constructive materials to it, or overcome its sta- 

 bility and compel it to move into right constructive 

 environments. Even then its growth does not meas- 

 urably alter, or disturb, in any essential respect, its pre- 

 vious structure, or action ; nor can the crystal utilize its 

 own increase of power better to orient itself to its outer 

 world and to move into a more saving and self-construc- 

 tive environment. 



But, so far as science can now determine, this dif- 

 ference between the methods of growth, or in the self- 

 constructive power of "living things" and "dead things" 

 is not in the presence or absence of any particular ma- 

 terials, or quality, but in their architecture; that is in 

 the formal ways their elemental powers are organized; 

 for all the nature-powers science can recognize, or 

 identify, are apparently universal and interchangeable. 



V. The Architecture of Organic Growth 



In all living things the new and the old are con- 

 tinually coming and going, or shifting their relative 

 positions. In the inmost recesses of living protoplasm, 

 the older structures are not merely eroded and new 

 chemical elements added to the eroded surfaces, but 

 new corpuscles, or atoms and molecules, interpolate 

 themselves, by intussusception, between the old, either 

 taking the places of those removed, or crowding those 

 that remain into new places. The process of intus- 

 susception is like the removal and addition of the mem- 

 bers of a family, or fraternity, or the inhabitants of 

 a city, or nation. The same methods of internal re- 

 adjustment, removal, or repair also prevail among the 



