IMAGERY IN SOCIAL GROWTH 341 



recognized, the prospective gain in this elemental co- 

 operation then becomes the incentive, or the compelling 

 motive to social cooperation, a motive as immortal, or 

 enduring, as elemental human intelligence. All the ex- 

 isting social systems of man have been upbuilt, con- 

 sciously or unconsciously, willingly or unwillingly, by 

 the use of these cooperative methods. 



They fail, as every other growing system fails, when 

 the limits of cooperative coherency are reached ; when 

 the mutual give and take become unbalanced or un- 

 just; when the currents of profit, duly earned, persist- 

 ently set in one direction and there are no compensat- 

 ing returns from obligations elsewhere duly performed ; 

 when the will to service is fattened by parasitism to 

 inaction, and poisoned by privilege to insensibility; 

 when the channels of service are hardened by con- 

 servatism and clogged by formalities which destroy the 

 power of adaptive response; and when the instru- 

 ments of conveyance, to and from the outlying and 

 submerged, are, unable to fulfil their elemental func- 

 tions. When any one or more of these social condi- 

 tions arise and are not adaptively rectified, a patho- 

 logical condition is produced comparable with or- 

 ganic disease, or senility, in animal life. Something 

 then breaks, or fails duly to perform its functions. So- 

 cial atrophy, hypertrophy, or paralysis, may then en- 

 sue; or some vital social organ falls, or rises in re- 

 bellion. Death then mercifully enters, followed by 

 dissolution, and clears the ground for a new attempt. 



Dissolution may be gradual or catastrophic, but 

 in any case the surviving fragments, like swarm spores, 

 or ovum and sperm, then reunite to form new struc- 



