2 6o GRAND STRATEGY OF EVOLUTION 



structive power, either for the producer, or for any 

 one else. 



This more obvious and more permanent usefulness 

 of detachable possessions is an essential condition for 

 barter, or commerce, or for that mutually profitable ex- 

 change of constructive properties across the larger 

 reaches of time and space, which separate one individ- 

 ual from the other. The viability, or conveyability, 

 of these constructive properties is an essential condition 

 to the functional unity of separate human beings, or, 

 in other words, to social metabolism. 



While the growth of these cultural properties led 

 to endless conflicts for their possession, they were not 

 wholly destroyed by the change of ownership, but ac- 

 cumulated to form the foundation of future social life 

 on a still larger scale. 



For as slaves, retainers, domesticated animals and 

 plants, cultivated lands, dwelling places, weapons and 

 utensils of all kinds grew in constructive power and 

 durability; as man's knowledge of the right way to use 

 them increased; and as their saving and constructive 

 value extended beyond the nominal owner, to the 

 many, the initial limitations of the more primitive in- 

 dividual man were widened, his sense of personality en- 

 larged, blending with that of his more helpful fellows, 

 and so into that of the social group and its common store 

 of cultural possessions. The social unit then virtually 

 became the property of every individual in it. For 

 each one could then rightly refer to it as my clan, or 

 my village, or in later stages of social evolution, as my 

 city, my college, or my country. 



From time to time, the hearthstone, the totem, the 

 college color, the cross, the crescent, or the flag, became 



