its own well-being only through a certain waste of material, or expenditure of labour upon the lower plane, yet communicating back to matter influences from that state of well-being to which it has thus attained—may it not be that waste of a certain kind (what I would call "selective waste" versus "haphazard waste") is the concomitant not only of spiritual but of material growth also? May it not be that evolution has followed upon a course of waste deliberately willed and insisted on—and that without such waste, life—even material life—had not evolved to its present stage?
We see a certain wastefulness attaching to many of the most beautiful biological manifestations in the world. Up to a certain point, the construction of flower, bird, beast, fish, shows a wonderful economy of structure, of means to end (it is the same also in the arts). But there comes a point at which Nature, "letting herself go," becomes fantastic, extravagant—may one not say "wilful"?—in the forms she selects for her final touches of adornment. And is it not nearly always when the matter in hand is most closely related to the "will to live"—or, in other words, in relation to the amative instincts—that the "art of living" breaks out, and that Nature quits all moderation of design and becomes frankly ornamental and extravagant? Just at the point where to be creative is the immediate motive, where, in the fulfilment of that motive, life is found to be a thing of delight,
