94 SYMBIOGENESIS 



exchange services. The example shows, indeed, that the rate 

 of progress in human as well as in organic life can be 

 quickened as it actually and constantly is being quickened 

 by extending the borders of co-operation. The nation that has 

 stepped into the breach owing to a misfortune of another 

 nation is not dependent for all future time on its own 

 resources, but will soon be in a position to depend increasingly 

 on the surplus resources of other nations. What is more, 

 efficiency and knowledge are everywhere increasing fast where 

 increasing co-operation, with increasing security of life and a 

 consequent increasing reliance upon a variety of reciprocal 

 differentiations (specialisations), are becoming the rule of life. 

 The expert knowledge gained by the members of one nation 

 thus adds continually to the store of knowledge already shared 

 by all. Spencer's view of adaptation and of species formation 

 thus, in spite of an otherwise well-selected analogy, remains 

 too local, too narrow. A better view of adaptation is that of 

 Prof. Eimer, who remarks that the individual is not necessarily 

 constructed entirely in accordance with its own requirements. 

 " Only an inconceivably gross egoism could seriously make this 

 assumption the individual is nothing but a wheel in the clock- 

 work of the universe; to the universe its characters must be 

 adapted; for the wheel, for the individual itself, only such a 

 proportion of advantage is possible as the order of the whole 

 allows, as in this order belongs to it." 



That mere mechanical explanations are insufficient will 

 become clearer still from the following of Spencer's considera- 

 tions regarding "growth." He tells us that: 



"Growth is a concomitant of Evolution; and if Evolution 

 of one kind or other is universal, growth is universal," and, 

 further, that w r here the growth is to become great, there exists 

 to start with a well-developed embryo and a stock of assimilable 

 matter. " Where great bulk is to be reached, the young pro- 

 ceeds from an egg of considerable bulk, or is born of consider- 

 able bulk ready organised and partially active." "Beyond 

 the mass and organisation directly bequeathed, a bird or 



