COMPULSION OF NATURE-ACTION 323 



of self-construction and self-conservation, although ex- 

 ceedingly intricate and variable in detail, is very sim- 

 ple and invariable in principle. It is a universal co- 

 operative system of mutually profitable give and take; 

 a system of reciprocating egoism and altruism, whereby 

 more serviceable agents are created for use in larger 

 creative enterprises. 



When once a right way is found, a more secure 

 foundation is laid for further construction. That is 

 the reason why there are such things as great lines of 

 evolution, or progress. That is the reason they are 

 so continuous, direct, and cumulative in some one or 

 more particulars, or as the biologist would call them, 

 orthogenic. These lines of progress may be called, 

 with equal propriety, the pathways of constructive 

 Tightness, in so far as that particular way, or condition, 

 is concerned. The limitations to progress in that par- 

 ticular individual thing are reached, sooner or later, 

 according to its own degree of constructive Tightness 



and that of its environments. 







Thus in their broader aspects, the evolution of hu- 

 man thought and the evolution of the world's physical 

 architecture follow comparable, or corresponding 

 courses, making it possible to establish profitable co- 

 operative relations between psychic action and organic 

 action, conduct and environment. 



The subtle compulsion which moves and guides 

 psychic evolution, leading it persistently toward the 

 recognition of a threefold directorate: creator, pre- 

 server, and destroyer, is due to the fact that these three 

 terms symbolize three fundamental attributes, or actual 

 processes, or realities, of nature. These three attri- 



