plant community that we can observe the process of
competition in isolation, uncomplicated with other social processes. The
members of a plant community live together in a relation of mutual
interdependence which we call social probably because, while it is close
and vital, it is not biological. It is not biological because the
relation is a merely external one and the plants that compose it are not
even of the same species. They do not interbreed. The members of a plant
community adapt themselves to one another as all living things adapt
themselves to their environment, but there is no conflict between them
because they are not conscious. Competition takes the form of conflict
or rivalry only when it becomes conscious, when competitors identify one
another as rivals or as enemies.

This suggests what is meant by the statement that competition is
interaction _without social contact_. It is only when minds meet, only
when the meaning that is in one mind is communicated to another mind so
that these minds mutually influence one another, that social contact,
properly speaking, may be said to exist.

On the other hand, social contacts are not limited to contacts of touch
or sense or speech, and they are likely to be more intimate and more
pervasive than we imagine. Some years ago the Japanese, who are brown,
defeated the Russians, who are white. In the course of the next few
months the news of this remarkable event penetrated, as we afterward
learned, uttermost ends of the earth. It sent a thrill through all Asia
and it was known in the darkest corners of Central Africa. Everywhere it
awakened strange and fantastic dreams. This is what is meant by social
contact.

a) _Competition and competitive co-operation._--Social contact, which
inevitably initiates conflict, accommodation, or assimilation,
invariably creates also sympathies, prejudices, personal and moral
relations which modify, complicate, and control competition. On the
other hand, within the limits which the cultural process creates, and
custom, law, and tradition impose, competition invariably tends to
create an impersonal social order in which each individual, being free
to pursue his own profit, and, in a sense, compelled to do so, makes
every other individual a means to that end. In doing so, however, he
inevitably contributes through the mutual exchange of services so
established to the common welfare. It is just the nature of the trading
transaction to isol