26 CREATIVE INVOLUTION 



organising, an integrating, process as it is a differen- 

 tiating process." 



Alone, the individual entity, be it cell or man, can 

 achieve little. The biological reason of this is not 

 far to seek. There is a limit to which natural selec- 

 tion can carry the development of life, since it is 

 only a question of time when an organism will lapse 

 into a state of equilibrium with its environment. 

 When its evolution is thus threatened there is naught 

 to save it except a change of environmental contact, 

 and this change must be an accumulative one since 

 any other would destroy life. Bernard found that 

 it is Nature's wont to meet this issue by the gradual 

 compounding of the unit. A group comes perforce 

 into larger contact with the external world than do 

 its individual components. This means new adjust- 

 ments ; hence greater activity and more complex 

 functioning. The stagnation which comes with equi- 

 librium gives place to a quickening of the life im- 

 pulse. Through the reconquering of the environ- 

 ment the composite compound becomes an articulate 

 organism on a totally different plane from that of its 

 constituent elements, and a new evolutionary period 

 is inaugurated. That this period grows more com- 

 plex with each successive unit testifies to the all- 

 important part played by integration in the further- 

 ance of the life movement. 



