GENETICS 145 



" Ur-organismus " (a sort of archetype), the gradual 

 " unpacking " of which has constituted evolution. 



In their indiscriminate way of dealing with genetic 

 phenomena, many investigators have quite overlooked the 

 fundamental fact that in producing a cross they are really 

 experimenting in symbiogenesis, or, at any rate, that their 

 reliance must be on what has been symbiotically established, 

 and, further, that in all cases a certain amount of reproductive 

 expenditure also has to be allowed for. 



What proceeding could be more promiscuous, for instance, 

 than to cross an obviously diseased strain (disease being the 

 antithesis of symbiosis) with one that is healthy, in the hope 

 of producing normal effects? Yet it is done wittingly and in 

 all seriousness in many cases, and in many more, of course, 

 quite unwittingly, because of the lack of proper recognition of 

 pathological states. The result of crossing is either that you 

 produce a resultant greater than that of either of the individuals, 

 or, if there is morbidity in one or the other of the individuals, a 

 resultant of somewhat reduced viability. In all cases there is a 

 disturbance of the moving equilibrium, which subsequently 

 proceeds to re-arrange itself through segregations and elimina- 

 tions, according to the strength of the new resultant, to 

 the new compatibilities of the case. If it be a wholesome 

 cross, much of that which is dispensable of old material can 

 now be eliminated, on the principle that the better is the enemy 

 of the good. 



In the alternative, what had been added of noxious strains 

 must be extruded where possible, even sometimes at great 

 expense, in order to restore a sufficiency of unencumbered 

 vitality. If it were otherwise, if crossing per se meant the 

 achievement of a perpetual union of all there is of good and of 

 bad "characters " in the parents, then, indeed, evolution would 

 be quite a haphazard matter and quite as much a matter of 

 retrogression as of progress, as many are driven to assume by 

 their inadequate conception of the real driving factors of the 



