212 SYMBIOGENES1S 



Spencer as a concomitant of failing vitality, is very generally 

 due to malnutrition, i.e., to over-feeding and to the gluttony 

 of an abnormal nitrogen hunger, which follows so easily in 

 the wake of indolent (non-symbiotic) feeding and in-feeding. 

 Promiscuous modes of feeding, such as in-feeding, cannot 

 supply a well-proportioned nutrition, but must lead to 

 deficiency diseases and to a morbid craving for surfeit for 

 sheer lack of those vital principles (vitamines) which proper 

 symbiotic food ("love-food") so ideally provides. 



Seeds are the one great source of all albumen, and know- 

 ledge of the sacrificial character of the seed provides a cue as 

 to the use of albumen by both animal and plant. This use 

 must be strictly limited to symbiogenetic requirements, and 

 we have here one form of restraint required to be observed by 

 all strenuous organisms quite as much as sexual restraint and 

 that general restraint which is commonly required by mutual 

 forbearance in life. The evidence provided in the next chapter 

 will demonstrate more fully the profound biological 

 significance of Nature's abhorrence of a promiscuous and anti- 

 biotic use of nitrogenous (albuminous) matter, so generally 

 supplied by perpetual in-feeding. 



In summarising his evidence as to the part played by 

 nitrogenous matter in organic changes, Spencer lays emphasis 

 on the facts that nitrogenous compounds in general are 

 extremely prone to decompose : their decomposition often 

 involving a great and sudden evolution of force, and, further, 

 that substances classed as ferments are all nitrogenous. 



We must add that the extreme proneness to decomposition 

 characteristic of nitrogenous compounds is frequently fraught 

 with great " infective " danger. The excessive or too exclusive 

 ingestion of nitrogenous matter thus, by direct or indirect 

 chemical action (induction), communicates excessive tendencies 

 towards decomposition. It thus also facilitates the growth of 

 a pathogenic intestinal fauna. This has been shown by Prof. 

 E. Metchnikoff and others. At the Seventeenth International 

 Congress of Medicine (1913), papers were read by Prof. A. 



