258 GRAND STRATEGY OF EVOLUTION 



conserved, increased, and transmitted by them in a 

 process of social inheritance, from one race, or genera- 

 tion, to another. 



There was, of course, no formal continuity, or ar- 

 chitectural unity, in all these material things, or in 

 their constructive usage, like, that for example in the 

 organs of a living body; but their basic elements, or 

 properties, such as fire, heat, and light; the elasticity 

 of the bow, vibrating strings and membranes; the prin- 

 ciples involved in the hammer, the wheel, and the axle, 

 lever, arch, and sail; and the application of power in 

 pull and thrust, the automatic adjustment, or response, 

 of material things to gravity, atmospheric pressure, and 

 to other physical agencies, were everywhere the same. 

 The more complex mechanisms, that were evolved at 

 a later period, such as a watch, engine, or microscope, 

 were merely more complex cooperative combinations 

 of them "organized" for some particular end, or pur- 

 pose. 



In all this cultural evolution, the real gain, as in 

 all other phases of evolution, was in constructive right- 

 ness. The evidence of that Tightness was both in the 

 things so constructed, and in their constructors, human 

 and otherwise. Somehow, or in some way, there has 

 been registered and conserved in the architecture of 

 the individual man, as the regenerative power of the 

 race is registered and conserved in the architecture of 

 the egg, the power to reconstruct in a few hours what 

 had taken his ancestors many thousand of years to con- 

 struct. The most essential element of that new cultural 

 power was Tightness, or the "knowledge" of the right 

 way to do things. 



