BIO-DYNAMICS 87 



But temporarily-increased efficiency in these appliances by which blood 

 and nervous force are brought to an organ, will cause extra assimilation 

 in the organ, beyond that required to balance its extra expenditure. 

 Regarding the functions as constituting a moving equilibrium, we may 

 say, that divergence of any function in the direction of increase causes 

 the functions with which it is bound up to diverge in the same direction ; 

 that these again cause the functions which they are bound up with also 

 to diverge in the same direction, and that these divergences of the con- 

 nected functions allow the specially-affected function to be carried further 

 in this direction than it could otherwise be further than the perturbing 

 force could carry it if it had a fixed basis. 



He adds: 



It must be admitted that this is but a vague explanation. That 

 the facts are to be interpreted in some such way, may, however, be 

 inferred from the circumstances that an extra supply of blood continues 

 for some time to be sent to an organ that has been unusually exercised, 

 and that when unusual exercise is long continued a permanent increase 

 of vascularity results. (Italics mine.) 



Spencer thus rightly points out, that we must study the 

 organism as a whole. But I go further, and I insist that we 

 must expand this idea and view the organism in its biological 

 ensemble. Only if we learn to consider the phenomena here 

 concerned in their biological entirety shall we arrive at correct 

 interpretations. 



The facts of co-ordination, of mutual dependence and of 

 mutual support (unconscious co-operation) between organs, 

 stand out very prominently in the above passage. An organism 

 that manages to achieve such a high degree of co-operativeness 

 inseparable as we have seen this to be from bio-economic 

 co-operativeness as here depicted is on the way to transcend 

 itself, is indeed a transformed higher species as compared 

 with a previous stage of less efficient, less complete co-opera- 

 tion. "VTe have seen this to be so in the case of plantagens and 

 also in the case of amphimixis. If the extra work of ene organ 

 is able to stimulate the remaining organs sympathetically in 

 the direction of a genuinely increased output of "work" 

 generally, we have here an example of economic activity and 

 its good effects of precisely the same nature only different in 



