SYMBIOSIS 5 



and manufacturing food. It has the same power here, and the 

 food thus provided suffices for the animal as well as for the 

 plant within it. Hence we are confronted by the interesting 

 problem of plant-animalism (symbiosis). 



Among the general characteristics pointing to what I call 

 " ancestral dynamics " of the kind we are here concerned with, 

 the " periodicity " of the life processes in Convolute, is an item 

 which offers food for reflection. It may be, suggests Prof. 

 Keeble, that such adaptations as we are here concerned with 

 are " as much a property of protoplasm as weight is a property 

 of matter, and that the biologist is performing a service in 

 showing how deep bitten into the organism are the adaptations 

 whereby it adjusts itself to its environment." Precisely. 

 When we come to organisms, having regard to the fact that 

 they are composed of matter, we find that they are subject to 

 very much the same circumstances as matter, but super-added 

 to the bond of gravity, in their case, is the bond of organic 

 solidarity, constituted by common descent and by the inter- 

 relatedness of the world of life. Within these limits they form 

 their respective adaptations, their respective characters. 

 That these are frequently "deep bitten" into organisms results 

 from the obvious primordial need of reliable character and 

 reliable degrees of inter-relatedness, as we shall see more fully 

 later, and this need is primarily a bio-economic need. 



At the lowest stages of life, character is little developed ; 

 but, surely, we need not therefore infer that organic adapta- 

 tion is an altogether mechanical business, that the physical 

 environment has the identical coercive force upon an organism 

 that it has upon inorganic matter. This is an instance where 

 too exclusive a study of primitive life showing little develop- 

 ment of autonomous powers might easily become misleading. 



C. Bougie, of the Sorbonne, in his useful summary of the 

 various sociological and related biological schools of thought, 

 under the title of "La Democratie devant la Science," very 

 correctly reminds us that biological study by itself is very apt 

 to mistake phenomena essentially economic, i.e., voluntary 



