248 GRAND STRATEGY OF EVOLUTION 



and on the other, as a unit which is inseparable from 

 the environment which created it and which it helps 

 to create. 



For every animal, like a bank, a college, or an au- 

 tomobile, is both a product and a producer of its time. 

 As a created and creative agent, the constructive value, 

 or quality, of each one of them is manifest only when 

 all its parts are in cooperative action and when it is 

 itself in action as a creative agent within the social en- 

 vironment which created it. 



4. Triaxial Architecture as a Tropic Reaction 

 System, and as a Product of Tropic Action. The 

 most striking attribute of the triaxial system of growth, 

 in contrast with all other organic systems, is its su- 

 preme structural fitness for the discriminating receipt 

 of influences from the outer world, and for moving 

 from place to place in profitable response to them. 



Among the imperative requirements for this free- 

 dom of movement are: head-first locomotion, parallel 

 both with the main axis of growth and with the three 

 longitudinal systems of internal gradient treatment and 

 distributions; a stable neuro-haemal balance in respect 

 to gravity; and a bilateral symmetry in reference to a 

 changing asymmetry in its chief plane of action. 



From a historic standpoint, the gradual evolution 

 of this architectural system, which attains its logical 

 culmination in man's bodily structure, may be regarded 

 as a special form of tropic growth, or as a progres- 

 sively adaptive response to the more insistent actors of 

 the outer world. The constructive process includes 

 both the agencies to that end and the products, for it 

 derives its accumulating constructive profits from 



