112 ORGANIC DEPENDENCE AND DISEASE 



has entered in some degree upon all primitive stocks of ani- 

 mal life and from such racial dependence there has been no 

 escape. The lines in the animal world along which links in 

 the chain of advancement have continued unbroken, are but 

 few; the rest have run out into culs-de-sac where all hope 

 is abandoned. Their expressions are about us on all sides. 

 Neither barnacle nor brachiopod shows any tendency, after 

 the ages, to return to its original independence. 



11. It is thus emphatically true, in Nature's program, 

 that physical salvation is of the few and is the reward only 

 of righteous living. 



12. We must not try to escape the conclusion that mi- 

 crobic disease is an abnormal adjustment in which the para- 

 site lives its own dependent career at the cost of the host. 

 The disease is of the host, our friend suffers from tuber- 

 culosis, but the life of the parasite though fully adjusted is 

 still abnormal. For we have now evidence that the bacteria 

 were in their inception free and independent. Their de- 

 pendence is an acquisition of time. "Benign" or "malig- 

 nant, ' ' from our point of view, there is little place for belief 

 that either will change its adjustment. 



13. For dependent races of life there has been no rescue 

 or return. For dependent species, we are not so sure, but 

 the present evidence is not very favorable. We have inti- 

 mated for the case of the crinoid and the gastropod that 

 the former may have exerted its comprehending defensive 

 power to drive its parasite away. Frequently a host en- 

 cysts its parasite by building up a protective wall about it. 

 To get rid of a parasite is not, however, to cure the parasite 

 habit. 



14. Rescue of dependents is therefore not a part of the 

 scheme of Nature, except through the exercise of intelli- 

 gence. In Nature's plan of evolution dependents of all 

 sorts are negligible and abandoned to hopelessness, save 

 as gradually developing psychic factors intervene. 



