mselves--to perpetuate their kind. They even make provision for
their offspring. They go further still and _sacrifice_ themselves that
their offspring may flourish.

Here again selfishness is not the last word. Even plants will make
provision for their offspring, and in the last resort will sacrifice
themselves that their offspring may survive. A plant will fight with
its neighbours for the means wherewith to build itself up. But it will
also provide for more than mere maintenance. It will build up organs
for the purpose of propagating itself. Even ferns have their organs
for producing seeds. And many a plant will make a supreme effort to
produce offspring rather than die without having perpetuated its kind.
And plants--and of course more markedly animals and men--do not
stop with merely reproducing their kind. Besides devoting their
energies to propagation, they will deliberately make special
_provision_ for their offspring; they will supply it with albumen and
starch. And many insects are not only indefatigable, but highly
intelligent, in providing food for their young even before the young
are hatched out. They do not lay their eggs on any plant at random,
but will wander for miles to find a plant on which their young can
feed, and they then lay their eggs on that plant. Individual plants,
insects, animals, or men may be frightfully selfish in their hard
struggle for existence, but the one thing in regard to which no
individual is selfish is in regard to its offspring. Primitive man,
utterly callous about the sufferings of animals and of his own
fellow-men and even of his wife, is tenderly careful of his child
while it remains a child--and this is a very significant trait in his
character.

However indifferent the individual may be to the sufferings of those
about him, he will make any sacrifice for his offspring. There is
some instinct within plants and animals alike which impels them to
sacrifice themselves that their kind may continue.

So that Activity which is at the source of all life, and is keeping
living things together in an interconnected whole, not only forces
them upward in the scale of being, but is also driving them to look
forward into the future, to provide for the future--and, indeed, to
make the future better than the present.

* * *

This seems to be the way--judging by what we see in the forest--the
Activity works. Things have I not come to be as they are by the
slap-dash, irresponsible, u