406 GRAND STRATEGY OF EVOLUTION 



agencies that keep it rightly moving, constitutes the 

 metabolism of human social life. 



Social Betterments. But no vital process can grow, 

 or increase its possessions, without some provision other 

 than that necessary for mere conservation, or the main- 

 tainance of the previous conditions. To grow, or pro- 

 gress, the whole transaction must yield a profit. In 

 organic life, the provision for profit lies in a certain 

 measure of leisure, or of experimental freedom; a play- 

 time margin for adventure and exploration, which is 

 always available, in every phase of life, over and above 

 those compulsions necessary to machine-like main- 

 tenance. 



From these opportunities, universally available for 

 variation, for improvisation, or play, arise the chief 

 betterments of life, or the discoveries of the right ways 

 to do the new things which the new conditions always 

 demand. 



In social life, these provisions are supplied, al- 

 though often grudgingly allowed, in the margins of 

 life left open for wakeful rest, for contemplation, or 

 study, or play, after the labor necessary to sustain life 

 has been duly performed. Or more elaborate provi- 

 sions may be made by the establishment and support of 

 various institutions whose chief business is invention 

 and research, or the intelligent effort to discover the 

 right ways and means of meeting, or anticipating, the 

 new demands of the growing social organism. 







Whatever progress man may hope to attain can 

 come to him only through due response to these vital 



