344 GRAND STRATEGY OF EVOLUTION 



involve larger factors in time, space, and numbers, 

 broader vision and more intelligence are demanded. 

 But the cooperative instinct then becomes confused, or 

 divided into opposing motive currents which neutral- 

 ize, or ultimately defeat one another. Man becomes 

 wholly impotent to accomplish these larger purposes 

 when he reaches the limits of his ability to utilize na- 

 ture's resources, or when he becomes unable rightly to 

 interpret and adapt himself to the internal social con- 

 ditions created by his own social growth. In these re- 

 spects society is subject to the same constructive limita- 

 tions as a growing multicellular organism. 



Man's moral instincts, his desire to do the right 

 things, his willingness to make sacrificial offerings, may 

 be ever so strong, but if through sheer stupidity, igno- 

 rance, or intellectual cdnfusion in the handling of his 

 larger problems, he does not know what is right, what 

 really is helpful and constructive, his acts are more 

 likely to be suicidal than self-saving, because there are 

 always more wrong ways of doing things than right 

 ones. 



We have seen that in organic evolution every for- 

 ward step in the structural upbuilding of the living 

 animal body has been disc to the local enlargement 

 of some organ, or to some functional improvement, fol- 

 lowed by compensating adjustments elsewnere. 



But these local increments, or improvements, may 

 become pathological and disastrous, if carried too far. 

 They may lead to some form of giantism, or acro- 

 megaly; to purely acrobatic specialization; to super- 

 fluous ornamentation; or to some form of organic 

 parasitism, all of them of a confiscatory nature. Such 

 monstrous overgrowths, or functional inequalities, 



