220 SYMBIOGENESIS 



At the outset we are met by a difficulty. The parts of an inorganic 

 mass undergoing rearrangement by an incident force are, in most cases, 

 passive do not complicate those necessary reactions that result from 

 their inertia by other forces which they originate. But in organic 

 matter the rearranged parts do not react in virtue of their inertia 

 only : they are so constituted that the incident force usually sets up in 

 them other actions which are much more important. Indeed, what we 

 may call the indirect reactions thus caused are so great in their amounts 

 compared with the direct reactions that they quite obscure them. 



I would interpret this passage to mean that what I have 

 termed symbiotic, i.e., purely biological actions and reactions, 

 are in reality more important than the merely mechanical ones, 

 and as such complex organic substances are formed by, or in 

 obedience to, symbiotic activities, the more complex reactions 

 they set up may be said to be produced by the character and 

 behaviour of the organisms concerned. It is thus again evident 

 that these effects of behaviour, though often apparently 

 negligible and inconspicuous, are of greater ultimate 

 importance than mere mechanical effects. It is behaviour that 

 determines the most vital reactions and their important and 

 far-reaching consequences. 



Indeed, the inadequacy of his purely mechanical method 

 was eventually recognised by Spencer. As Principal C. Lloyd 

 Morgan, F.R.S., tells us in his Herbert Spencer Lecture, 

 1913:- 



But in the last edition (Principles of Biology, Ed. of 1898, pp. 117, 

 120) a special chapter is inserted on the Dynamic Element of Life. We 

 here find a tardy recognition of the presence of specific vital characters : 

 " The processes which go on in living things are incomprehensible as the 

 results of any physical actions known to us. ... In brief, we are 

 obliged to confess that Life in its essence cannot be conceived in physico- 

 chemical terms." 



Lloyd Morgan goes on to say: 



I speak of this as a tardy recognition, but it is one that does 

 honour to the man ; it is a frank admission that his previous treatment 

 was in some measure inadequate, which a smaller man would not have 

 had the honesty or the strength of character to make. Of course it is 

 traced down to the Unknowable. Life as a principle of activity is 

 unknown and unknowable, while phenomena are accessible to thought 



