262 GRAND STRATEGY OF EVOLUTION 



We may see in all this cultural growth the same 

 constructive strategy and cumulative benevolence we 

 have seen in other phases of evolution. For man's 

 mere bodily growth, supplemented by his external, or 

 cultural, constructiveness, while enlarging his egoism, 

 also enlarges his altruism. It thereby enables the in- 

 dividual man to give the body social something of more 

 permanent constructive value; and it is these personal 

 profits, to him no longer usable, which are ultimately 

 redirected to his future self, or offspring, as a germinal, 

 cultural heritage. 



We need not review the evolution of man's extra- 

 bodily constructions, such as tools, clothing, utensils, 

 material instruments, etc., whose architecture is al- 

 ways the expression, in some one or more particulars, 

 of the peculiar constructive power of his bodily or- 

 gans. All that is sufficiently familiar, or easily acces- 

 sible. What we wish to emphasize is that every new 

 cultural invention, or construction, every new discov- 

 ery in constructive Tightness, was virtually an exten- 

 sion of the powers of some one or more of his vital 

 organs, and yielded its returns in social growth, ac- 

 cording to the constructive value of the invention to 

 the individual man. And, to some extent, these inor- 

 ganic cultural instruments reacted constructively on 

 man's vital organization, as though they actually were 

 new vital organs. 



The rate of cultural evolution was, therefore, no 

 more uniform than organic evolution. It was spas- 

 modic and divergent; now rapid, now slow; now in 

 one direction, now in another, until the full creative 



