COHESIVE POWER OF SOCIAL LIFE 257 



their own, and that when rightly combined with his 

 own native powers they become virtually a part of 

 himself, supplementing the power of his own vital 

 organs, and extending his sense of self, and of personal 

 ownership, farther and farther beyond himself, into 

 the outer world of usable things. 



This merging of his living, organic self with ex- 

 ternal properties, inevitably extended to whatever 

 things in nature man could lay his hands upon and bend 

 to his self-constructive ends, including his fellow-man. 

 And there was the source of his mental confusion as 

 to the limitations of his personal rights, initiating end- 

 less conflicts to define and stabilize them. Man could 

 not sharply distinguish between the constructive and 

 saving power of his usable personal properties, such 

 as material objects, domestic, or wild animals or plants, 

 and human beings, and those of his own vital organs, 

 because in reality there is no such distinction. Hence 

 there could be no final solution to his problems of 

 ownership, personal rights, and the delimitation of 

 domains, or spheres of constructive action, except the 

 recognition that the right to use nature's properties 

 constructively, even man's right of self-usage, is not 

 restricted to any individual thing. That right is uni- 

 versal. 



The evolution of cultural architecture was a very 

 slow process, covering a period of something like fifty 

 thousand, or it may be five hundred thousand years. 

 It comprised the invention, discovery, and utilization 

 of many distinct and separate things, beginning with 

 the rudest implements of wood, or stone, or bone. They 

 were constructed, or invented, either de novo by differ- 

 ent primitive races at different times and places, or 



