value is conditioned by a form of
organization, which I propose in a restricted sense to term
intelligence. I mean the capacity which every living interest must
possess to {83} utilize the environment, to turn it to its own
advantage. This is the distinguishing and essential capacity of life
in every form. A plant can continue to exist, and a sculptor can model
a statue, only through being so organized as to be able to assimilate
what the environment offers. Whether it be called tropism or
technique, it is all one. Intelligence in this sense may be said to be
the elementary virtue, conditioning success on every plane of activity.

In using such terms as "satisfaction" and "success" interchangeably
with so irreproachable a term as "fulfilment," I may, until my meaning
is wholly clear, seem to degrade morality. But the tone of
disparagement in these first two terms is due to their having acquired
certain arbitrary associations. It is supposed that to be satisfied is
to be complacent, and that to be successful is to be hard and worldly.
Now, a narrow satisfaction and a blind success are morally evil; but
satisfaction and success may be taken up into a life that is wholly
wise and devoted. They will, in fact, constitute the real body of
value in any practical enterprise, from the least to the greatest.

The absence of intelligence, which I shall term _incapacity_, is the
one absolutely fatal defect from which life may suffer. Incapacity
embraces maladaptation, dulness, feebleness, {84} sickness, and death.
Like its opposite it does not enter into the moral account except in so
far as it affects a group of interests, through being prejudicial to an
individual's efficiency or a community's welfare; but it will impair
and annul attainment upon any plane. The fault of incapacity attaches
not only to life that is rudimentary or defective, but also to the
mechanical processes which have not been assimilated to any interest
and thus lie outside the realm of value. Incapacity in this sense is
that metaphysical evil of which philosophers speak. It testifies to
the fact that the cosmos is only partially subject to judgments either
of good or of evil; that value has a genesis and a history within an
environment that is at best plastic and progressively submissive.

In terms of intelligence and incapacity, the basal excellence and the
basal fault, it is possible to define that whole affair of which
morality is the constr