BIO-DYNAMICS 99 



This is, indeed, an adumbration of the view that an 

 important correlation exists between organisation and food, 

 and that the higher the organism the more discriminating it 

 has to be in its choice of foods. 



Have all animals equal surplus of assimilative power (asks Spencer), 

 and, if not, how far do differences between the surpluses determine 

 differences between the limits of growth? . . . For example, an ox 

 immensely exceeds a sheep in mass. Yet the two live from generation 

 to generation in the same fields, eat the same grass and turnips, obtain 

 these aliments with the same small expenditure of force, and differ 

 scarcely at all in their degrees of organisation. Whence arises, then, 

 their striking unlikeness of bulk ? 



We noted when studying the phenomena of growth inductively, that 

 organisms of the larger and higher types commence their separate 

 existences as masses of organic matter having tolerable magnitudes. 

 Speaking generally, we saw that throughout each organic sub-kingdom 

 the acquirement of great bulk occurs only where the incipient bulk and 

 organisation are considerable, and that they are the more considerable 

 in proportion to the complexity of the life which the organism is to 

 lead. 



The deductive interpretation of this induction may best be com- 

 menced by an analogy. A street orange-vendor makes but a trifling 

 profit on each transaction and, unless more than ordinarily fortunate, 

 he is unable to realise during the day a larger amount than will meet 

 his wants : leaving him to start on the morrow in the same condition 

 as before. The trade of the huxter in ounces of tea and half-pounds 

 of sugar is one similarly entailing much labour for small returns. 

 Beginning with a capital of a few pounds, it is impossible for him to 

 have a shop large enough, or goods sufficiently abundant and various, 

 to permit an extensive business : he must be content with the halfpence 

 and pence which he makes by little sales to poor people ; and if, avoiding 

 bad debts, he is able by strict economy to accumulate anything, it can 

 be but a trifle. A large retail trader is obliged to lay out much money 

 in fitting up an adequate establishment, he must invest a still greater 

 sum in stock, and he must have a further floating capital to meet the 

 charges that fall due before his returns come in. Setting out, however, 

 with means enough for these purposes, he is able to make numerous and 

 comparatively large sales, and so to get greater and more numerous 

 increments of profit. Similarly, to get returns in thousands, merchants 

 and manufacturers must make their investments in tens of thousands. 

 In brief, the rate at which a man's wealth accumulates is measured by 

 the surplus of income over expenditure, and this, save in exceptionably 

 favourable cases, is determined by the capital with which lie begins 



