96 SYMBIOGENESIS 



morbidity of in-feeding species, for instance, has become so 

 great as to demand excessive amounts of embryonic supplies 

 (regardless of quality), we may take it that this unenviable 

 requirement, which in some cases may lead to the sacrifice or 

 the devouring of the mother by the young, in itself in turn 

 becomes a cumulative cause of a further extension of the fatal 

 habit of depredation. If in the case of a degenerate the embryo 

 obtains " a large mass at but little cost to itself," this is not 

 by any means always to its true good. Neither is it altogether 

 so unconnected with the usual chain of economic cause and 

 effect as Spencer's innocent looking passage would make us 

 believe. Both the adult's and the embryo's surfeit (only 

 required in the given case because of a morbid appetite due to 

 bad habits) are obtained by depredation, and, hence, spell a 

 loss of ancestral dynamics, with resulting further general 

 deterioration of character. That it is which matters, and 

 matters most in the long run. Without such distinctions we 

 shall mix up indiscriminately different orders of facts. 



To what an extent organisation determines growth, 

 Spencer is unable to tell us, failing bio-economic orientation. 

 Clearly, if the bulk of a tree depends on an efficient vascular 

 system enabling the remote organs to utilise each other's pro- 

 ducts, the success of the tree is largely due to the efficient 

 co-operation of all the parts, to the concomitant efficiency of 

 its apparatus for drawing on soil and atmosphere for 

 sustenance, and last, not least to the cumulative good effects 

 (and biological reactions) of such wholesome bio-economic 

 activities accruing in course of time. In other words, the tree's 

 character is its first wealth, and forms its main reliance for 

 status and survival, its justification for what bulk it 

 legitimately requires. 



The qualified dependence qf growth on organisation might 

 indeed have easily become a much stronger point with Spencer 

 but for the fact that it is "traversed and obscured by sundry 

 other relations," which relations, of course, proved too intri- 

 cate for him to disentangle without the aid of a proper 



