248 SYMBIOGENESIS 



should finally prove correct.* Enough for our purposes that 

 physiological order exists and requires recognition as 

 differentiated from purely physico-chemical order. Enough 

 that the internal and the external are inter-related or have in 

 course of time become related though differentiated. Enough 

 that aspects of behaviour and of economics are the more 

 important the more we find the inter-dependence of life to have 

 progressed. 



Whether an organism has a nervous system and is con- 

 scious of what it does or not, matters comparatively little. 

 What matters more is that it becomes an active participant in 

 the business of life. Vivre, ce n'est pas respirer, c'est agir. So 

 long as an organism works, it may do so without, or with only 

 an equivalent of, a nervous system. Spencer's remarks go a 

 long way to show that the genesis of a nervous system depends 

 on metabolism and on mobility (circulation), and hence on 

 work and on division of labour, and generally on systematic 

 bio-economic conduct. Excessive expenditure of nerve-force 

 involves excessive waste of tissue. This is true, and it might 

 be due, amongst other factors, to "over-work." In the 

 majority of cases, however, and this is what Spencer has over- 

 looked, waste of nerve-force and correlated loss of tissue and of 

 structure is due to the other extreme, viz., cessation of work and 

 consequent loss of symbiotic relations. Spencer, usually so fertile 

 in illustrations, here signally fails to provide a good instance of 

 nerve and tissue degeneration, although they abound in nature. 

 Apparently we are to be satisfied with certain clinical observa- 

 tions and with the illustration drawn from sleep. But an 

 animal like the Ascidian, for instance, which surrenders 

 typical activity and becomes fixed on the soil in order to batten 

 without toil on the offal of life, is like an organism in perpetual 

 sleep and suffers a most drastic degeneration of the nervous 



* Here I am inclined to agree with Mr. O. W. Griffith (Hibbert Journal, 

 January, 1915) : " The real issue is not between monism and dualism, or between 

 vitalism and mechanism. The real issue is between the cramped confines of a 

 formula and the ever-widening comprehensiveness of a philosophy. It is true of 

 life, as it is true of the whole universe, that its greatness is manifest only in its 

 wholeness its unifying totality." 



