146 SYMBIOGENESIS 



process. Then, indeed, there would be little object in believing 

 (and some deny it) that Nature abhors certain modes of breed- 

 ing and of feeding, because antagonistic to the fundamental 

 bio-economic principle. 



Evolution on such a chaotic view would not be much more 

 than a matter of haphazard variations and haphazard crossing 

 (assisted by local expediency), whilst in reality it is a matter 

 of work and production of values first, and the sexual part is 

 only one of the methods of the gradual fixation and accumula- 

 tion of values. 



It is not in vain that every organism is under the 

 primordial necessity to pass in its development through the 

 primitive unicellular condition, and the obvious costliness of 

 this vital and indispensable process should put us on 

 our guard and shew us what values are concerned 

 when we see such elaborate safeguarding processes in 

 operation, and that in general the maintenance of values 

 is a prime concern of Nature. Any would-be imitation 

 of the natural method which leaves out the implied concern for 

 bio-economic values is doomed to failure, or, at any rate, it is 

 not likely to give us reliable information about the true ways 

 of Nature. 



I have referred to Plato's anticipation of Darwin in the 

 matter of the hostility between relatives, and as the treatise 

 on Friendship bears in a marked way on the question of the 

 relatedness of things, and, hence, is calculated to throw light 

 on the similarity of behaviour in chemical elements and in 

 Mendelian entities, and on the substitution of certain affinities 

 by others, it is worth while to go into the matter a little 

 further. 



Plato in telling us of the notion of some of his con- 

 temporaries, that frequently like is most hostile to like, and the 

 good to the good, adds that this is so, because the like can 

 derive no benefit from the like. In other words, and as I have 

 already been at pains to point out, the antagonism arises only 

 with a failure of sufficient symbiotic relation. Plato, for 



