THE NEW LEVIATHAN 383 



and constructive materials ; metabolizing iron and coal, 

 sunlight, and soil, and moving waters, into vital instru- 

 ments; sending out its products, its messengers, and its 

 demands to its far flung constituents, and receiving from 

 them, over the crumbling barriers of time and space, 

 and life and death, their reassuring answers. 



The universe is its habitat, the earth its den, and the 

 earth, like an egg, is a well provisioned residence. In 

 the narrow cleft, between the more substantial earth 

 and the blanket of its enveloping atmosphere, it lives 

 and moves, and multiplies; riding free the currents of 

 terrestrial circulation; creeping into inviting valleys; 

 crossing nature's bridges as they emerge; and following 

 up the favoring shores of ancient causeways; spreading 

 out, where life is easier, in denser racial spots and larger 

 sprawling patches; linked over no-man's land by 

 thread-like filaments of interlacing traffic; or inter- 

 mingling hostile bloods, and merging spots and patches 

 into one, the living film at last grows around the world, 

 shutting in its cosmic heritage. East then meets west, 

 and north meets south on common territory. 



Even so, in a growing embryo, the network of initial 

 blastodermic cells spreads from its initial point over all 

 the surface of its provisioning sphere, enclosing within 

 itself its parental heritage. 



II. The Mosaic of World Life, Functional and 

 Morphological 



But in spite of the basic uniformity of its human 

 elements, the blastoderm of social life appears to our 

 mind's eye as a labile mosaic pattern, an iridescent 

 social checker-board, the architectural product of 



