CHAPTER XI 

 TRANSITION FROM PASSIVE TO ACTIVE ADAPTATION 



Up to this point our discussion has been confined very largely to 

 passive adaptation in its various phases and processes and with 

 good reason, for most men and social groups in most of their 

 activities are devoid of forethought, yet our attention has been 

 called repeatedly to the fact that social evolution is a process of 

 increasing power of man over his material and spiritual environ- 

 ment. 



Whether or not there is any break in the cosmic process war- 

 ranting the distinction between passive and active adaptation is 

 a mooted question, some holding that we have only new and 

 increasingly complex combinations of mechanical forces, others 

 holding that activity and consciousness go back to the primal 

 cell, but the fact is indisputable that man as no other animal 

 rebels against nature, fights, conquers, in some sense and to some 

 degree. Man as no other animal is a dynamo for the transforma- 

 tion of mechanical energy drawn from the material environment 

 to personal energy which reacts on that environment. In this 

 respect individual men differ greatly, — so do groups. Such 

 materialistic monists as Ernst Haeckel tell us that man is noth- 

 ing more than a dynamo, — a mere machine, — whose product 

 in personal energy is strictly commensurable with the material 

 energy transformed. This is Ward's position as we shall see in 

 the next chapter. " Matter is dynamic," he says, " and every 

 time that man has touched it with the wand of reason it has 

 responded by satisfying a want." But reason, itself, according 

 to strict monism, is only the most highly complex portion of the 

 human machine and of the same stuff as all other machines, 

 whether made of inorganic matter, or organic as in the vegetable 

 and animal kingdoms. But granted, for the sake of argument, all 

 that the monists claim; — granted that there was originally no 

 distinct break between man and his pithecoid precursor, physical, 



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