420 APPENDIX 



its makeup some measure of that Tightness. In that measure of cooperation 

 and Tightness lies the fitness of his constituents, and the selective agency 

 in the evolution of the molecule. 



But the molecule thus peremptorily set up in business for itself, and 

 without being consulted in any way as to his own wishes in the matter, 

 has his own work in the world to do, subject to his own specific attributes 

 and external compulsions. This new anarchist, by force of circumstances, 

 may be compelled to help in the construction of proteids to be used by 

 some future plant or animal life, even if his anarchistic soul does rebel at 

 the performance of such useless altruistic labor, and at such unwarrantable 

 interference with his freedom of action. 



If we now make a momentary excursion toward the other extreme of 

 nature^ction, into the domain of the astronomer, we apparently find the 

 same constructive, selective, and saving agencies at work that are manifest 

 in the upbuilding of the molecule, only the system and its component parts 

 are larger, the time and space factors greater, and the unknowable movers 

 have different names. 



Here the cooperative agencies are the sovereign cosmos, and the sovereign 

 individualities it contains. These solar systems, with their constituent suns, 

 planets, and satellites, and their subordinate elements, are grouped in 

 partially visible architectural entities, suggesting the wholly invisible mole- 

 cular entities of physics and chemistry. 



The gains in this cosmic action-system are formulated in sidereal archi- 

 tecture, and the continuity of its constructive services is manifest in the 

 stability of its organization. The morphology of the heavens, like that of 

 molecules and living organisms, is not only an index of past and present 

 physiologic action, but an assuring prophecy of future action. Without 

 this forward and backward aspect, along a gradient line of progressive 

 nature-action, science itself could not exist, for there would be no base line 

 for the profitable orientation of intelligent thought or action. 



In each of these larger sidereal units, and systems of units, is embodied 

 the summed up profits of past cooperative actions. In this self-construction 

 lies the egoistic phase of these individualities. The ulterior altruistic serv- 

 ices to which they are accessories are in some measure apparent in the 

 terrestrial conditions under which, without our consent or approval, we now 

 exist. So let us get back to earth again, where these agencies have made 

 life and constructive thought a possibility, and have rigidly defined its 

 impossibilities, whether we like these invitations, restrictions, and com- 

 pulsion of nature's discipline, or not. 



In the terrestrial world, the most convincing and familiar example of 

 creative unity through cooperative action, is the living organism. But plant 

 and animal life stand on, and in, the altruistic achievements of the physical 

 world. They are pensioners of the past, using both the oldest and newest 

 instruments of nature in their self-construction. The individual plant, or 

 animal, is the product of its cooperating elements, cells and organs, and its 

 environment, and is itself a cooperative agent in that environment. It is 

 subject to its own sovereign attributes, as well as to those of its constituents 

 and its habitat. The individual gain is everywhere contingent on the gen- 

 eral. The plant can not long endure without the animal, the male without 

 the female, and neither without their retinues of other servants. They exist, 

 as they do, because of these mutual services, within and without, past and 

 present. Their profit is in service betterments: their working capital, past 

 betterments conserved. 



In this phase of nature-action, the cooperative system is formless, elastic, 

 and democratic. Plants and animals are the actor-units, widely separated 





