308 GRAND STRATEGY OF EVOLUTION 



versally honored as a necessary part of social life, as 

 much so as marriage and loyalty to the state. But 

 well within a century, it has been stricken from the 

 statutes of every civilized nation, not so much because 

 it had failed to work in the past, or had failed to serve 

 its initial purpose, but because it could not, in prac- 

 tice, stand the stress of further development, and be- 

 cause it could not be intellectually justified as a means 

 to further social progress. Slavery, indeed, primarily 

 had its creative and cooperative values in the mutual 

 services of master and slave; in that respect it was 

 less slavery in reality than in name. It was only when 

 actually carried by its own growth to its logical and 

 inevitable conclusion, and the repeated attempts to 

 build upon it a larger and more elaborate social sys- 

 tem failed, that its mutually destructive character was 

 clearly recognized. 



The gain in constructive mental Tightness thereby 

 achieved was absolute and permanent. But this gain 

 was not so much in the destruction of formal slavery 

 for social slavery still exists, no less pernicious for 

 its lack of recognition as in the fact that the philoso- 

 phy of slavery had lost its intellectual defense. 



In recognizing the self-destructive character of 

 slavery, mankind made a discovery in constructive 

 Tightness of elemental magnitude. As one of the pos- 

 sible methods of social construction and social growth, 

 slavery was thereby stricken from the mind of man. 

 As a creative social factor, it was as dead as cannibal- 

 ism. A better way to social growth was opene^d, the 

 old one closed forever, and an old virtue had become 

 a crime. 



