THE NEW LEVIATHAN 409 



them. Society thereby automatically reorganizes itself 

 into more direct and more stable systems of coopera- 

 tive conveyance. 



Under the pressure of the rising floods of necessity, 

 this shifting of social functions into broader and 

 straighter channels may rapidly assume revolutionary 

 dimensions, as recently demonstrated in our own coun- 

 try. But this threatened metamorphosis in our national 

 life created no destructive protest, because there was a 

 sufficient capital of social intelligence to recognize the 

 saving and creative way in that emergency. The mani- 

 fest logic of Tightness was the agent of compulsion. 



Every successful revolution in the administration 

 of animal life, and there have been a great many of 

 them, is made in some such way as this. An essential 

 condition is the existence of different systems of or- 

 ganic conveyance, growing up side by side in the same 

 living organism, as, for example, the gills and lungs of 

 a fish, or tadpole. The one system of conveyance ulti- 

 mately supplants the other because it better serves the 

 demands of the growing organism. And that better ser- 

 vice then creates new growths, which make more de- 

 mands, leading the whole organism, as fishes and tad- 

 poles were led from water on to land, into a new 

 world of light and air, of food and sound, of space and 

 motion. The older system survives and serves, in 

 diminishing measure, till the new birth of freedom is 

 accomplished. It is then scrapped, or in part destroyed, 

 in part reserved for more general usage, and the rem- 

 nants incorporated into new instruments, such as male 

 vocal organs and resonant auditory chambers, which 

 then perform new and wholly different services. Thus 

 this organic metamorphosis and the transfer of impor- 



