COHESIVE POWER OF SOCIAL LIFE 259 



Thus a most significant factor in cultural evolution 

 is the enlarged sense of personality that goes with every 

 increase of man's personal properties, or possessions. 

 When man made a club to reinforce his fist, or teeth, 

 shaped a log to improve his locomotion, or cleared a 

 place to plant a root, or seed, helping it to grow in or- 

 der to insure the continuity of his own food supply, it 

 was in effect a larger process of self-construction, in 

 which the growth of his own individuality was ex- 

 tended beyond his organic self, into those properties 

 which he appropriated from nature, or which with his 

 own hands, instead of his digestive organs, he con- 

 structed out of nature's own constructive materials. 



His instinct of self-preservation then widened to 

 embrace his larger self, compelling him to preserve 

 and protect his possessions, as he would a part of his 

 own body, or his own offspring. 



That is, the conscious possession of these self-con- 

 structing cultural properties carried with it the mental 

 compulsion to protect and save them. This is merely 

 another instance of the compulsion of possessions that 

 we have seen in operation in the organic and physical 

 world. 



Another significant factor is that these cultural 

 properties can be detached, or alienated, from their 

 producer, or creator, without destroying their con- 

 structive power, or usefulness. For a well-constructed 

 club is as impartial in its impact, a plot of ground, in 

 its returns, and a canoe, in its buoyancy, for the man 

 who buys them, or steals them, or in any other way gets 

 possession of them, as they were for the man who put 

 his labor into them. But the head, or hand, cannot 

 be so separated from the body and still preserve its con- 



