186 SYMBIOGENESIS 



of Herbert Spencer's pronouncements anent the Principles of 

 Biology. We have seen already how modern experimental 

 Biology is driven to go back to the dynamic concepts of 

 Spencer, and how these will have to be developed into a proper 

 science of Bio-Dynamics. We have also seen that his views 

 are too mechanical, and that he exaggerates the passivity of 

 life. It sounds like a protest against and a correction of 

 Spencer's view when we find Prof. Bateson declaring " The 

 bodies and properties of living things are cosmic, not chaotic." 

 But this modern view has reference only to the Mendelian 

 concept of the constitution of organic matter, and though this 

 view and the connected chemical factors were unknown to 

 Spencer, we have found that they resolve themselves in the 

 last analysis into bio-dynamic, i.e., bio-economic, factors. 

 Although, therefore, the "reign of law" has become more 

 complex and more emphatic since the days of Newton, Darwin, 

 Spencer, and the Duke of Argyll, yet dynamics still provide 

 the best clue to the understanding of the phenomena of life. 



There is an " all-pervading orderliness," says Prof, 

 Bateson, " nor can we conceive of an organism existing for one 

 moment in any other state." It should be added, however, 

 that all organisms are bio-dynamically inter-related, and that 

 this is the very cause of that orderliness of chemical and 

 genetic units which compares so strikingly with that of cosmic 

 bodies and invites the suggestion of "cosmic" properties in 

 organic matter. 



We have already seen that even this Batesonian recogni- 

 tion of " cosmic " law and of an " all-pervading orderliness " 

 had to remain vague pending the introduction of Bio- 

 Economics and Bio-Dynamics. In the absence of "values" 

 what elementary mechanics could be applied had to be a kind 

 of "theoretical" mechanics. "Applied" or "practical" 

 dynamics require "values" which, however, have not been 

 supplied hitherto. 



Let us take another modern pronouncement bearing on the 

 dynamics of life by a leading Biologist: 



