44 CREATIVE INVOLUTION 



they local centres of a formative power pervading the 

 mass as a whole. 



It is to be noted that the above process making for 

 the essential unity of the Metaplast was the same the 

 Chromid had used; with this advance, though, that 

 the response was greater and the co-ordination more 

 perfect. So we can but conclude that the life- 

 impulse felt itself caught up into a higher rhythm, 

 however much the elements which stood out for .indi- 

 vidualism may have decried the union-spirit. And 

 since might has ever made right, the world became 

 conquered anew. But even at that early day history 

 knew to repeat itself. Consequently we find the 

 Metaplast, although a people vastly superior to the 

 Chromidia, settling down to commercialism after the 

 manner of these. And peace would doubtless have 

 been a permanent possibility if it had not been that 

 the struggle for existence was fast becoming an evo- 

 lutionary factor. I might say in explanation that, 

 no Malthus having arisen to give warning of the dan- 

 gers of rapid multiplication, the population was in- 

 creasing in geometrical ratio. In view of this, the 

 competition for commercial supremacy which sprang 

 up among different states is not at all surprising. 

 The contest at last narrowed down to two peoples, 

 strange to say both of the same branch, and .it is a 

 question which would have won had not the Gastrea 

 (the one more closely resembling the primitive stock) 

 become possessed of some higher vision. 



