60 CREATIVE INVOLUTION 



overthrow. While it is a question how much the 

 individual mind should fall back upon the collective 

 one out of which it has risen to self-recognition, it 

 is a still greater question to what extent it should 

 relegate its power to the forming of higher com- 

 plexes of thought-activity. 



In the course of any development there may be 

 movement which is not toward the highest goal ; that 

 which to-day lies in the line of our potentialities, 

 may, by the misdirected effort of to-morrow, be lost 

 forever. The monkey can never attain the pinnacle 

 now occupied by man, though for his progenitors, 

 some aeons back, that height was a possibility. 

 That is not progress, whatsoever advance it may 

 mark, which does not leave the way open to further 

 attainment. The evolutionary road had its col- 

 lateral branches as well as its main line; there are 

 doubtless many ways that one may go astray on 

 the involution road. The vegetable kingdom stands 

 a monument to that very error. The integration of 

 the social insects has seemingly reached its goal. 

 While the groups have differentiated to a certain ex- 

 tent, there is no apparent involution. As an in- 

 stance of the same sort among men, the caste system 

 of India has not tended to national growth. These 

 group involutes were based on so low a degree of in- 

 dividualisation that there has not been impetus suf- 

 ficient to carry them beyond a slight variation. 



The problem of socialism for us to-day is the 



