GENETICS 141 



all the remnant of the people shall spoil thee." The same 

 fundamental truth as appertaining to the relations between the 

 different species, genera, and orders in nature, involving a 

 recognition of "the everlasting difference between right and 

 wrong," has not yet found its way into Biology. Plato, at any 

 rate, has shown that internecine and international warfare is a 

 vicious state, and that its cause is usually connected with 

 physiological excesses and resultant decay of character. 



Similar to those partly true notions of Plato's time anent 

 the hostility of like to like, Darwin's metaphorical " struggle 

 for existence " is supposed to refer principally to the (natural?) 

 "enmity" between brothers and cousins, and Sir E. Ray 

 Lankester tells us: " The survival of the fittest alludes exclu- 

 sively to the struggle within the borders of a race," that is to 

 say, attention has been mainly devoted to that aspect of the 

 struggle. 



Again, we must say that the "struggle " (so far as it is 

 the lethal struggle, at any rate) has reference to those brothers 

 who for some reason or other (chiefly metabolic !) fail to enter 

 into proper relations of reciprocal differentiation with each other. 



" If thou wilt take the left hand, then I will go to the 

 right ; or if thou depart to the right hand, then I will go to 

 the left." 



From Darwin's admission of the advantages of diversifica- 

 tion it is not a far cry to the recognition that normally what 

 slight (economic) antagonisms between brothers is permissible 

 and even desirable, should only amount to a matter of mutual 

 accommodation through co-operative diversification. 



The one great lesson, however, that we can glean from all 

 these considerations is that there is an "antagonism" from 

 the noblest forms of " allelomorphism," i.e., wholesome 

 diversification, to the most gruesome forms of mutual (competi- 

 tive and morbidly instinctive) hatred pervading all nature in 

 accordance with values, purporting the continuous sifting of 

 the grain from the chaff, and resulting in the establishment of 

 a hierarchy of beings in accordance with their deserts. 



