372 GRAND STRATEGY OF EVOLUTION 



other words, that intellectual cooperation, or mental 

 give and take, on which the preservation and improve- 

 ment of our social life depends cannot be assured with- 

 out a clear understanding on the part of the common 

 people of those agencies which have created the social 

 conditions in which they live. 



For in mental, as well as physical phenomena, it 

 is an essential part of the grand strategy of evolution 

 that every new discovery of constructive Tightness cre- 

 ates new possessions which make new demands and im- 

 pose new obligations. These obligations must be ful- 

 filled if the beneficiary would preserve his gains. 



We have already shown that the most creative 

 period in the history of evolution is the one in which 

 we are now living. To match this cataclysmic out- 

 burst of creative power, we search in vain the whole 

 gamut of geological records, where creative eras are 

 measured in millions of years, and where the construc- 

 tive gains are small indeed in comparison. These im- 

 measurable achievements and new possessions, create 

 our immeasurable obligations to science. 



Nevertheless science is as yet in its glorious youth. 

 It is possible still further to increase its creative power; 

 but it can be done only by- extending more deeply and 

 widely into the social body the mental attitude toward 

 nature-action, and the mental methods which have cre- 

 ated science. 



That means primarily the abdication of intellectual 

 dominion; the democratization of constructive thought 

 as well as constructive labor; putting, not merely the 

 physical machinery of social life and the instruments 

 of physical power into the hands of the common peo- 

 ple, but elemental truths and mental Tightness into their 



