APPENDIX 417 



is now the source of our authority, and creative nature-action, as expressed 

 in nature-growth, is the standard of all our values. Science is therefore 

 compelled to express all her measurements in positive and negative con- 

 structive terms, which ultimately must be oriented in reference to this 

 gradient base line of nature-progress, called evolution. 



In this nature-growth, we fail to discover any gain or loss, either in 

 basic constructive matter, or in energy. But gain there must be, _if evolution 

 is a reality. That gain is, in reality, a moral and ethical gain, or a gain 

 in that creative action and constructive Tightness which we call organiza- 

 tion and -directive discipline. There are no better positive and negative 

 terms to express those gains, both relatively and absolutely, than the 

 familiar terms, right and wrong, good and evil. 



On this point, therefore, there need be no equivocation in our message. 

 The profit in evolution is in better constructive action. By the conservation 

 of these profits, nature augments her capital in constructive Tightness. 



But how is this profit made and conserved? That is the really vital 

 question. Until it is answered there can be no underlying intellectual 

 stability in human life, individually, or socially; no basic unity of purpose 

 in human conduct. Here our vision is not so clear. Many of us believe 

 that on this point we have no comprehensive message to give. 



The most familiar attempts to explain how evolution takes place are 

 restricted to special aspects of evolution, and are often epitomized in per- 

 sonal names, such as Darwinism, Lamarkism, Weismannism, Mendelism. 

 Among us there are naturalists, morphologists, physiologists, and psychol- 

 ogists; breeders, experimentalists, and bio-chemists. And surrounding us 

 on all sides are the physicists, chemists, geologists, and astronomers, with 

 whom we must reckon, for their domains and their subject matter overlap 

 ours in countless ways. 



But unfortunately between all these workers there is little common 

 understanding and much petty criticism. 



Are we building out of aimless contributions to science a new Babel's 

 tower of disjointed, slippery words, with nothing to hold them to con- 

 structive lines, and preserve the unity of purpose in our social architecture? 



Perhaps the most comprehensive terms, although they have little mean- 

 ing outside the organic world, are "natural selection," the "struggle for 

 existence," and the "survival of the fittest." But granting their validity 

 within the organic world, they have no definite moral significance. They 

 convey no implication as to how man, or anything else, must act in order 

 to exist, to say nothing of surviving. What is the fittest? Why is it fit? 

 Why does it survive? If right combinations happen primarily by chance, 

 why, or how, do they come to happen regularly? How can "right acci- 

 dents" become cumulative, or lawful, or determinate, unless there is a 

 saving, or more enduring, directive element in that something we call 

 Tightness ? 



When the layman makes his holiday call on his biological menagerie 

 and points his umbrella at us, hoping to receive through that safety-first 

 device a brush discharge of information, we fail to "come across" with 

 illuminating answers to these very pertinent questions. But to conceal our 

 low potential, and preserve our self-respect, we all resort to certain un- 

 intelligible sounds, or warning signals, according to the particular pen in 

 which we have been bred and exercised, and which are guaranteed to 

 scare away, or charm into inaction, the most intrepid questioner. One 

 mumbles something about "environment" and "ecology," and crawls back 

 into the bushes. Another wheezes something about "enzymes" and "vitality" 

 and goes on with his experimenting. Another climbs to the top of his cage 

 and yells "eugenics," while his mate in the corner faintly lisps "euthenics." 

 Some particularly active youngsters jump into a revolving wheel, and 



