286 DEVELOPMENT AND PURPOSE CHAP. 



modes of action. So far as these conflict, they tend 

 to cancel out. So far as they harmonise, they maintain 

 one another. Hence within any system working on 

 the whole in co-operation, the harmonious tendencies 

 survive and the harmony becomes more and more 

 complete. 



Thus harmony is not only a product of development, 

 but a cause of development. It is a cause, so to say, of 

 itself, for it tends, in the manner shown, to extend its 

 sphere and deepen its hold. But harmony does not grow 

 by any automatic process. The living being and, indeed, 

 the structural parts of the living being tend, in the first place, 

 to maintain themselves, and it is only by selection and modi- 

 fication that they are brought into harmony with one 

 another. The possibility of harmony thus depends on the 

 plasticity of organic types, and in the lower stages, where 

 this plasticity is small, it cannot advance far. In the higher 

 stages, and particularly among men, the potentialities of 

 development become more numerous and many-sided, and 

 it is possible to select among them those that will harmonise, 

 and so progressively extend the principle. The development 

 of harmony then involves a principle of selection or modi- 

 fication. In the lower stages such a principle is found in 

 the indirect action of heredity, which preserves the varia- 

 tions suited to their environment, and, therefore, among 

 others those which depend for success upon an extension of 

 harmony. But the wider extension of the principle rests 

 on consciousness, which, as the direct organ of correlation, 

 is the means of harmonising the diverse promptings of 

 different structures and the independent aims of different 

 living beings. But even when consciousness has arisen, 

 the law of self-maintenance remains. Every type of life, 

 even every type of action and of structure, tends to 

 maintain itself, and so every fresh advance of harmony 

 which is to replace discord involves modification. It 

 is of the nature of a discovery of a new possibility of 

 synthesis for which the conditions may be long preparing. 

 Hence a system whether physical or social which is 

 strong enough to maintain itself at a certain stage may 

 remain there indefinitely till new conditions arise. More- 



