94 CREATIVE INVOLUTION 



complexes. And with the Articulata thus put to the 

 side, there is none to dispute man's right, for he 

 combines in himself, as does no other vertebrate, the 

 essential features of a structural unit. 



Man possesses in a high degree that plasticity 

 which rendered the unit, whatsoever its biological 

 period, peculiarly sensitive to outward influences. 

 He has also the great activity which has given him 

 an increasing perception of the nature of the en- 

 vironment. And above all is he distinguished by 

 those powers of concentration and quick response 

 that have ever characterised his predecessors in the 

 life chain. In man the psychical functions of the 

 organic living network have reached their highest 

 development thus far. Furthermore he stands in 

 the same structural relation to the social congeries 

 that earlier units stood to their respective colony 

 formations. And because of his ability to respond 

 more effectively to his environment than his fellow- 

 creatures of the present evolutionary period, the 

 more insistent and imperative is the need on his part 

 of the larger adjustments coming through involu- 

 tion. 



The human social composite is in its turn serial 

 with the previous colony formations. Chromid, 

 Cell, Gastrea, and Annelid, each in its turn passed 

 through the same stages of development as are to be 

 traced in the growth of a sovereignty. Nor does 

 the social body fail to meet the criteria of an organic 



