CORRESPONDENCE 

 "EVOLUTION BY CO-OPERATION" 



To the Editor of "Science Progress" 



Sir, 



Please allow me to correct an inaccuracy that has crept into a review of 

 my book in your number for October 1914, which seriously misrepresents me on 

 a vital point. 



I have indeed, throughout, made a great feature of " cross-feedmg" which is 

 a totally different thing from " oul-faed'mg" a term erroneously attributed to me 

 by your reviewer. I have never used the term " out-feeding." The prefix 

 " cross" on which I insist is to indicate that there exists normally a symbiotic 

 relation between organism and food {i.e. food-supplier) analogous to the relation 

 between the sexes. Hence my generalisation relating to nutrition — analogous to 

 that stated by Darwin with regard to fertilisation : " Nature abhors perpetual 

 in-feeding." The term " out-feeding" by no means conveys the symbiotic connota- 

 tion on which I lay chief stress. On my view no amount of mere "out-feeding" 

 or mere " vegetarian " feeding can be of avail in the long run in progressive 

 evolution unless attended by adequate services and counter-services, i.e. a 

 fundamental and adequate symbiosis. 



(I consider "cross-feeding" and symbiotic strenuousness primitive as com- 

 pared with " in-feeding '' and (parasitic) indolence just as some botanists consider 

 dicotyly a primitive character, and as some believe that trees and shrubs are 

 primitive compared with herbs among flowering plants.) 



Like other independent writers before me, I am quite content to bear my share 

 of contumely for championing a new cause, although I could wish indeed to have 

 expounded my thesis with more lucidity and co-ordination. I would point out 

 that even " descent with modification " was greatly ridiculed at first. I am merely 

 emphasising that in this modification nutrition has played a most prominent part, 

 and further that it owes its prominence as a factor to its vital connection with the 

 (past and present) bio-social and bio-economic history of the particular organism, 

 i.e. with its general use-relatedness to the web of life. 



I have thus been led to the "arch-heresy" of "evolutionary ethics" quite 

 logically and not, as your critic seems to think, from a zealot's wish to apply his 

 particular system to nature. Here again I may say that I am quite prepared to 

 take this onus upon me notwithstanding the extreme disparagement the subject 

 has received, and I feel confident in the ultimate establishment of the principles 

 I am here advocating. So far as parasites are concerned, after all it is only due 

 to a corollary of the Natural Selection theory that we persist in classing them 

 amongst the "fittest." If the corollary of any theory of mutual service on the 

 other hand demands their classification in the opposite category, there is very 

 good reason I think on (modern) physiological grounds for the belief that 

 parasitism does result in inferiority and extreme morbidity {vide its general con- 



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