342 GRAND STRATEGY OF EVOLUTION 



tural patterns, or redissolve in one another to form 

 new social mixtures which grow again and reproduce 

 new social generations in new environments. 



This indestructible social attribute of man is the 

 hereditary germinal factor in society which endows 

 society with its immortality. The repeated attempts 

 to find a better way cooperatively to unite diverse hu- 

 man individuals supplies the diversifying factor in 

 social development analagous to sexual reproduction. 

 Ultimately these fertilizing unions provide new means 

 of social salvation, and direct the subsequent social 

 cleavage and the upbuilding of social institutions 

 throughout the embryonic and youthful stages of soci- 

 iety to a new maturity. 



This repeated dissolution and regeneration of social 

 life does not differ in any essential respect from the 

 death and reproductive regeneration of individual life. 



But no living organism in death normally disinte- 

 grates into its ultimate elements. Some of its gains are 

 permanent. Besides the more specific germinal ele- 

 ments of life, other parts survive after the parent organ- 

 ism dies, or has severed its connection with its offspring, 

 such as egg-yolk, foods, and various administrative 

 provisions supplementary to the living germ. They 

 enable the new life safely to bridge over the more 

 precarious initial stages of growth, insure its welfare 

 in youth, and its guidance into right developmental 

 channels. The longer these renewed developmental 

 journeys are, the more bounteous and righteous these 

 ancestral provisions must be. And so they are. 



So also it is with social death and regeneration. 

 The culture of social life is seldom, if ever, wholly 

 extinguished. Through many winters of discontent it 



