198 SYMBIOGENES1S 



The self-sustaining power of an organism suffers from 

 increasing bulk only in so far as the increase is abnormal, i.e., 

 at the expense of character, of proportion, and of symbiotics. 

 Every normal increase of size is secured against " mechanical 

 weakness" by new correspondences symbiotically gained. It 

 is only where there is a loss of symbiotics and a resultant loss 

 of correlated support that "mechanical weakness" (and general 

 pathology) must ensue. It is precisely such symbiotically 

 unprotected parts of "massive" organisations which provide 

 a favourable soil for alien forces "falling on them," with 

 the result of decompositions. Ubi uber, ibi tuber. The 

 extinction of many monstrous forms of higher life, e.g., certain 

 ruminants) is now believed to be due to the ravages of parasites 

 quite as much as to mechanical weakness, and this means in 

 reality that their resistance had become lower, and that as a 

 consequence of their depredation on plants they had to be con- 

 tent with inferior fare, and with diminished and inferior 

 correspondences, and thus in the end provided the soil for 

 microbic infection. The biological cause of weakness is thus 

 coming more and more to be acknowledged as of greater 

 importance than, and indeed as determining, the mechanical 

 weakness. 



That certain modes of feeding are primarily responsible 

 for stimulation towards great size and monstrosity, I have 

 already pointed out. In cases of surfeit, as we have seen, 

 vegetative growth proceeds abnormally at the expense of 

 sexual development, and cell-division may become retarded. 

 As Prof. M. Hartog has it, a cell may from its own 

 gluttony become too obese for even this activity (of cell- 

 division), and so it does not divide, even though Spencer's 

 limit be seemingly long past. 



If great bulk and impressive massiveness are, mechanically 

 speaking, conducive to weakness, there is all the more 

 reason for bio-economic restraint on the part of the organism. 

 All the more reason for "noblesse oblige" and for an 

 avoidance of anti-biotic conduct and of food constituents that 



