This fact that gradation, as well as variation, exists is one of the great facts we have to note. For it indicates that the Organising Activity which keeps the individuals together is not keeping them together on a uniform dead level like the ocean, but is propelling them upward like the mountain. The significance of this fact has not hitherto been adequately noted. We are for ever speaking of equality when there is no equality. We have never noted with sufficient attention that everywhere there are grades and degrees. But it is a fact which a contemplation of the forest indelibly impresses on us. And it is a most welcome and inspiring fact, for it gives us a vision of higher things and promotes a zealous emulation among us. * * * And the Organising Activity is not only upward-reaching, but forward-looking. It looks to the future. We have remarked how the individuals strive and compete with one another in order to get food and air and light with which to nourish and maintain themselves. But self-maintenance is not their only object. They seek to propagate themselves--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.