COMPULSION OF NATURE-ACTION 305 



Thus the compulsion of nature-action has its ultimate 

 organic outlet in the compulsion of intelligence. 

 Here, as elsewhere, the directive saving and creative 

 agency is Tightness. 



II. The Expression of Nature's Self -constructive 

 Ways in Man's Self-constructive Social Laws 



If every individual thing in nature were made of 

 materials wholly peculiar to itself, and each thing 

 acted wholly in its own way, there would be no nat- 

 ural laws, and there could be no science; there could 

 be no ethics or morality, right or wrong, or intelligent 

 action. Man, even if he, or anything else, could exist, 

 would bump his way through the world with less" regu- 

 larity and less chance of profit than an amoeba, or an 

 atom of hydrogen. 



But since man has discovered a very large degree 

 of material uniformity and of mutual regulation in 

 nature, foresight and intelligent conduct on his part, 

 or the preparation for coming events in accordance 

 with past experience, is possible. His ways of act- 

 ing, especially when they are self-creating and self- 

 preserving, or when they are more general in their 

 application rather than particular, then become in 

 some measure a replica of nature's self-constructive 

 ways ; we then call them social laws, or customs, rather 

 than natural laws. 



When man became conscious that his ways were 

 good, he appropriated them to himself; called them 

 his own laws, and in self-preservation demanded their 

 observance. The evil, or bad ways, in self-defense, he 

 rejected, or forbade, or tabooed. As his vision of good 

 and evil became clearer, and his ways and means of 



