ist. But it should be remarked that
this opposition between the careless and rough course of the cosmos,
the insidious forces of dissolution, on the one hand, and the
self-preserving care of the organism on the other, is present
absolutely from the outset of life.

Vegetable and animal organisms do, it is true, adapt themselves to the
environment; but their adaptation is essentially a method of using and
modifying the environment in their own favor, precisely as is the case
with human action. {23} Therefore Huxley's sharp distinction between
natural plant life and man's artificial garden is misleading.

'The tendency of the cosmic process,' he says, 'is to bring about the
adjustment of the forms of plant life to the current conditions; the
tendency of the horticultural process is the adjustment of the
conditions to the needs of the forms of plant life which the gardener
desires to raise.'[8]

But this is to ignore the basal fact, which is that plant life in any
form is a defiance of current conditions. Art has already begun when
natural processes assume a form that feeds itself, reproduces itself,
and grows. The first organisms have only a local footing; they are
rooted in the soil, and can turn to their advantage only the conditions
characteristic of a time and place. Eventually there evolves a more
resourceful unit of life, like the gardener with his cultivated plants,
who is capable of inhabiting nature at large. But the method is still
the same, that of playing off nature against nature; only it is now
done on a larger scale, and in a more aggressive and confident spirit.
The need of concession to the demands of locality is reduced, through a
concession once and for all to the wider processes of nature. But in
relation to its environment, life is never wholly constructive, as it
is never wholly passive. Whether it appears in the form of vegetation
or civilization, {24} it always involves both an adaptation of nature
to itself and of itself to nature.

Morality, then, is natural if life is natural; for it is defined by the
same essential principles. It is related to life as a later to an
earlier phase of one development. The organization of life answers the
self-preservative impulse with which life begins; the deliberate
fulfilment of a human purpose is only life grown strong enough through
organization to conduct a larger and more adventurous enterprise.

V

In the light of this conception let