CHAPTER XX 



FREE ACTIVITIES 



And again the intellectual power helps to establish a 

 higher efficiency in co-operation by enabling its activity to 

 be free. That great organized co-operation of nature, which 

 biology discovers in the grouping of cells in ordered func- 

 tions to make up a complex and powerful body, has been 

 carried to a high and perhaps to the highest effective evo- 

 lution of that type. In size and armed strength certain 

 great animals have reached probably the limit of power 

 of that kind, and yet have yielded place, in struggles with 

 much weaker creatures, co-operating in the militant struggle 

 for existence. And the best armed of them have failed, 

 or are now failing, probably from the very excellence of 

 their equipment, in a function which is outclassed by the 

 higher one. It is not to be suggested that pacific conduct 

 is new. It has been seen that pacific co-operation is primal, 

 and precedes the struggle for existence, which begins when 

 crowding makes rivalry. In the beginning the growth of 

 life in a generous and extensive world is not a struggle, 

 but an enjoyment of prosperity, in which the hostility is 

 external, and is due to changes of natural conditions, such as 

 heat and cold, and violence of elements and such like events, 

 disturbing the peaceful field in which new life is growing. 



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