362 GRAND STRATEGY OF EVOLUTION 



That community of understanding, that agreement 

 in acts and purposes, is the mental basis of social ethics 

 and morality. It is the power which holds individu- 

 als together in organic unity. The varying degrees 

 and extent of that agreement determines the cleavage 

 lines of social units, and the union of those units into 

 larger or smaller social bodies. 



IV. Social Motives and the Compulsion of Achieve- 

 ment 



Needless to say those social acts and purposes are 

 always two-fold, and reciprocal in their action: (i) 

 to increase the security, happiness, and creative power 

 of the individual through the constructive usage of all 

 the available social agencies; and (2) to increase the 

 security and creative power of the social group, or 

 state, by increasing the creative and cooperative power 

 of all its constituents. The state and the individual 

 citizen are alike involved in this reciprocating altru- 

 ism and egoism. 



On this understanding, vague, narrow, or even semi- 

 conscious as it may be, social life has gone far on its 

 constructive way. To retreat now, to repudiate this 

 unwritten covenant, would be suicidal. Death would 

 be as certain for both state and its citizens, as it would 

 be for the body and all its organs, if the heart and brain 

 refused to act cooperatively. 



Therein lies the directive agency of acquired pos- 

 sessions, and the mental compulsion of achievement; 

 the inevitable tragedy, as well as the challenge of so- 

 cial life and growth. In the consciousness of these 



