BIO-DYNAMICS 75 



CHAPTER II. 



BIO-DYNAMICS. 



It is an illusion that great men are the creatures of their times ; 

 they are born and bred in the undistinguished era that preceded. 



The Elizabethans were born under Henry VIII., Edward VI. and 

 Mary. The great Athenians of the fifth century before Athens tried 

 to dominate Greece, and while she was growing men under the pacific 

 rule of the Pisistratids, Imperial Athens exhausted the Athenian stock 

 by two generations of warfare, and fell, never to rise again. The heroes 

 of the French Revolution are all to be credited, biologically, to the ancien 

 regime. PROF. F. C. S. SCHILLER. 



Tout depend finalement du point de vue ou Ton se place: et le 

 point de vue final ne depend pas de la science naturelle. BOUGL. 



In the previous chapter my task has been to elucidate the 

 essential quasi-economic principles' which underlie symbiosis. 

 It was found that this elucidation was calculated to supply us 

 with important qualitative biological data and to facilitate 

 biological orientation generally, and, in particular, to enable 

 us to draw the line more rationally and more profoundly than 

 has hitherto been possible between physiological and patho- 

 logical developments. 



If the diagnostic method so far deduced be reliable and 

 there is strong evidence in its favour if it be also correct 

 that we must seek for an explanation of what has happened by 

 the study of what is happening, it follows that our diagnosis 

 applies quite as pertinently to the dynamics of the past as to 

 those of the present, and that it thus affords a valuable clue to 

 the sifting of the positive from the negative factors of evolu- 

 tion and hence also to that most vexing of problems, 

 that of biological " origins " generally. 



One of the difficulties felt very acutely by biological 

 investigators has been to distinguish between characters of 



