126 SYMB10GENES1S 



phyla of animals required a very gradual symbiogenesis with 

 its high physiological values accumulated by inheritance, and 

 in this connection it is obviously of great importance to con- 

 sider a little more exactly what the modern teaching about 

 heredity is. 



On consulting Prof. A. J. Thomson's volume on the sub- 

 ject, we learn that Heredity is: 



(a) "A sort of maze in which Science loses itself." 

 (Balzac.) 



(6) Determines the individual life. 



(c) The genetic relation between successive generations. 



(d) An organism's genetic relation to its forbears. 



(e) A condition of all organic evolution. 



The same writer also tells us : " What the living creature 

 is or has to start with in virtue of its hereditary relation ; what 

 it does in the course of its activity; what surrounding 

 influences play upon it these are the three determining 

 factors of life." 



From the above we do not get much further light than we 

 have gathered in previous pages to the effect that what a 

 particular generation has available in ancestral and more 

 recently acquired dynamics, together with their corresponding 

 physiological or pathological, psychological and bio-economic 

 correspondences, ready to be projected into the next genera- 

 tion, represents its hereditary endowment. "Heredity is a 

 condition of all organic evolution," because it is a record and 

 result of racially accumulated values, and all organic evolution 

 is primarily based on the production of such values. 



The true genetic relation between successive generations 

 involves values quite as much as it involves blood-relationship, 

 and the bio-economic integrity to be handed on is as important 

 as physiological integrity. Everything in evolution, as we 

 have seen, turns round the production, utilisation, and 

 adequate accumulation, preservation and distribution of 

 organic values. Whilst one generation of organisms is com- 

 pleting its life cycle of activities, whilst it is having its share 



