SYMBIOSIS 9 



of physiologists to grant a certain degree of incipient per- 

 sonality, character, and intelligence to all organisms, however 

 humble? Some, no doubt, there are who will say that it does. 

 Let us see what we may infer from Prof. Keeble's conclusions. 

 He tells us that: 



The fact which stands out most prominently from open-air 

 observations of C. roscoffensis and C. paradoya is that the behaviour of 

 these animals is complex and purposeful. By some means or other they 

 create for themselves an ordered life, in spite of the welter of change 

 in their environment. Through the ever-varying conditions of the world 

 in which they live, they thread their consistent way as surely as we, 

 with conscious self-control and agility, pick our ways safely through the 

 crowded traffic of the street. 



This view, then, concedes the incipient circumspection of 

 primitive life required by my bio-economic theory. When 

 Prof. Keeble says that organisms achieve these high ends " by 

 some means or other," I would interpret it to mean: by 

 "work." The beginnings of psychological activities and of 

 "work" (systematic, i.e., useful activity), and, indeed, the 

 beginnings of (organic) civilisation, must, as we shall presently 

 see more fully, be dated back much further than has hitherto 

 been supposed. This is one of the lessons which the considera- 

 tion of the life of the plant-animals will have to teach us, 

 although we need not confine ourselves to this subject alone 

 for evidence. Thus Prof. Klebs, who is a leading botanical 

 experimentalist, speaks of "the inner world" of organisms, 

 the importance of which, as he says, increases with the degree 

 of differentiation. 



Again, when Prof. Keeble concludes that the connection 

 between perception of impulses by a plant and the subsequent 

 excitation of the living substance of its tissues differs only in 

 degree but not in kind from the nervous phenomena of the 

 higher organisms, and that the mode of orientation is deter- 

 mined by the plant itself, and has in each case a purposeful 

 significance, we have again an appreciable approach of 

 similarities between lowest and highest forms of life. The 



