322 GRAND STRATEGY OF EVOLUTION 



the one be found, the other avoided? How may man 

 live profitably? 



Has not that been the history of science, that 

 breaker of false images and unwelcome intruder on 

 the domains of religion and philosophy? Are not 

 those also her ultimate thoughts and purposes? Does 

 not science aim to follow, step by step, link by link, 

 the chain of cause and effect, backward into history 

 and forward into prophecy, in order to discover, as 

 nearly as may be, how things are created, or "happen," 

 or come into being; how they endure, or survive, or 

 are saved ; how they are constructed, or organized ; how 

 they grow, or profit; how their growth is checked and 

 accelerated; how they are disorganized, or destroyed; 

 and how man himself may profit thereby? Or, in still 

 simpler terms, how can science help man to attain 

 that which is good and avoid that which is evil? 



To these basic questions the same answer always 

 comes back, clothed in similar meaning, if not in sim- 

 ilar terms: Mutual service creates and preserves. The 

 profit is in Tightness. 



Fitness and adaptation, those conjuring words with 

 which the biologist so blandly performs his tricks, and 

 conceals the way he does them, are but other names for 

 Tightness. In any particular case, adaptation, in ac- 

 tion, is the finding of the right way of doing that par- 

 ticular thing, and avoiding the wrong way. Fitness, 

 or adaptation, as an accomplished fact, is the mani- 

 fest evidence that in that case, and to that extent, the 

 right constructive way has been successfully found. 

 Science first points out these facts and then seeks to 

 discover how these ways are found. 



And science finally reveals to us that nature's way 



