human
beings who are present, and the problems of life policy are the same.
This is another reason why the attempts to satisfy interest become mass
phenomena and result in folkways. The individual and social elements are
always in interplay with each other if there are a number present. If
one is trying to carry on the struggle for existence with nature, the
fact that others are doing the same in the same environment is an
essential condition for him. Then arises an alternative. He and the
others may so interfere with each other that all shall fail, or they may
combine, and by cooperation raise their efforts against nature to a
higher power. This latter method is industrial organization. The crisis
which produces it is constantly renewed, and men are forced to raise the
organization to greater complexity and more comprehensive power, without
limit. Interests are the relations of action and reaction between the
individual and the life conditions, through which relations the
evolution of the individual is produced. That evolution, so long as it
goes on prosperously, is well living, and it results in the
self-realization of the individual, for we may think of each one as
capable of fulfilling some career and attaining to some character and
state of power by the developing of predispositions which he possesses.
It would be an error, however, to suppose that all nature is a chaos of
warfare and competition. Combination and cooperation are so
fundamentally necessary that even very low life forms are found in
symbiosis for mutual dependence and assistance. A combination can exist
where each of its members would perish. Competition and combination are
two forms of life association which alternate through the whole organic
and superorganic domains. The neglect of this fact leads to many
socialistic fallacies. Combination is of the essence of organization,
and organization is the great device for increased power by a number of
unequal and dissimilar units brought into association for a common
purpose. McGee[30] says of the desert of Papagueria, in southwestern
Arizona, that "a large part of the plants and animals of the desert
dwell together in harmony and mutual helpfulness [which he shows in
detail]; for their energies are directed not so much against one another
as against the rigorous environmental conditions growing out of dearth
of water. This communality does not involve loss of individuality, ...
indeed the plants and ani