378 GRAND STRATEGY OF EVOLUTION 



This infant monster is not merely the formless ag- 

 gregate we vaguely call humanity, although mankind 

 constitutes the denser warp and woof of its social pro- 

 toplasm. Intermingled with its substance are count- 

 less plants and animals, high and low, large and small, 

 living symbiotically with man, guided by his will, and 

 in turn, controlling him; pouring their nutrient and 

 transforming products into these human microsomes, 

 and exchanging their own vital commodities with those 

 of mankind, on precisely the same cooperative basis 

 that man makes his exchange with man. 



But, it may be objected, man is a separate living 

 thing; he has a definite form of his own, is made of 

 coherent parts, and moves about at will from place to 

 place, while "society" is stationary, an amorphous, ses- 

 sile thing, tied to its native soil, and is made up of 

 different things, widely separated, such as human be- 

 ings, animals and plants, dead machines, books, and 

 material edifices. 



These differences, and many others, are obvious 

 enough. But are they really significant, or vital dif- 

 ferences? It depends on our standards of measuring 

 time, space, and service values. 



A human being starts life as a microscopic germ, 

 and grows to man's estate and power by profitable ex- 

 change with the materials and forces of his outer 

 world. His form is never constant, or his content; his 

 materials and directive forces stream in from the outer 

 world, and out again, in countless other ways than the 

 grosser, more familiar ones of feeding, respiration, 

 and excretion. And these same materials, forces, and 

 influences may be used by other living things in a 

 roundabout cannibalism, none the less real because it 



