CHAPTER XVII 

 life's value and aim 



Investigation thus discovers a further explanation of 

 conduct in the revelation of a physical relationship among 

 all individuals of a race in proportion to their community of 

 descent. 



Conduct is now seen as an evolution beginning in the 

 simple form of sole isolated responsibility of a single celled 

 creature, responding to irritation, or other stimulus, with- 

 out volition. In the outset of this simplicity conduct may 

 affect only the one creature in question, but as the descen- 

 dants in evolution from this individual extend their relations 

 according to their growing powers and motives, so their 

 conduct extends in its complexity of the motives of many 

 creatures in concert, and extends too in its complex effects 

 upon many in concern. 



And so when we attempt to review the extent of the 

 causes of human conduct, and to discover the extent of its 

 effects, we find ourselves in communication with all the rest 

 of nature in an interdependence inseparable. And thus we 

 learn and see that this dependence is not only of activity, 

 but the activity itself parallels the physical constitution and 

 its history, whose complexity it truly reflects. 



This history, now so complex, is found to be the con- 

 tinuing story of a life ruled in a unity of principle, and con- 



134 



