EXPANSION: THE LAW OF LIFE 361 



These considerations enable us, then, to affirm that the funda- 

 mental law of life is expansion ; the life which is best adapted to 

 the prevailing conditions of existence is the life which contains 

 the greatest power of expansion. In the stages of evolution 

 which precede man, expansion stops with the expansion of the 

 indi-ddual. The conditions of existence for the brute are such 

 that, when its iadividual wants are fully satisfied, and when its 

 reproductive needs obtain satisfaction, the fundamental laws of 

 life are fulfilled. But as we ascend the scale of evolution, we 

 find this expansion of the individual growing ever more compli- 

 cated and ever more powerful. In the case of the primitive and 

 prehistoric man of the caverns, when sufficient fish had been 

 caught and sufficient prey trapped, when sufficient satisfaction 

 had been afiorded to the reproductive instiuct, life had reached, 

 for the individual, its highest degree of expansion. But even in 

 a stage of human evolution far inferior to ours, among the savage 

 tribes of Africa and America and Australia, we find this desire 

 for individual expansion extending considerably beyond its 

 primary limits. The need for expansion is no longer satisfied 

 with the fulfilment of animal and purely individual wants. 

 First of all, we find these tribes living, no longer isolated, but in 

 society ; and when social existence has replaced isolated exist- 

 ence, the desire, as also the power, of expansion on the part of 

 the individual becomes immeasurably increased. How it was 

 that the isolated man of the caves succeeded in attaining to the 

 stage of collective or tribe life does not here concern us. It 

 suffices us to know that he did attain to it, that societies were 

 formed, that human life did advance beyond the isolated stage. 

 And, when the individual was no longer isolated, when he 

 became the member of a tribe, when his individual existence 

 became more or less bound up with the existence of a number 

 of other individuals, then the expansion which is the funda- 

 mental law of Ufe increased proportionately. Henceforth the 

 life — that is to say, the faculty of expansion — of the individual 



