BIONOMICS 255 



changes occurring around ; save when accidentally arrested by 

 these." 



One might think on reading these lines that a plant is not 

 concerned at all in biological symbiosis. 



"Progress towards more prolonged and higher life 

 evidently implies an ability to respond to less general 

 co-existence and sequences." 



What is this progress if not one in increased bio-economic 

 specialisation and usefulness? Responding to "less general 

 co-existences and sequences" may mean anything; in 

 particular, as we have seen, it may and must frequently mean 

 pathogenesis, i.e., degeneration, retrogression falsely called 

 "simplification," and such a consummation cannot produce 

 "progress towards a more prolonged and higher life." 



"Each step upwards must consist in adding to the 

 previously-adjusted relations which the organism exhibits, 

 some further relation parallel to a further relation in the 

 environment." 



How is such an increase of (sympathetic) relatedness to be 

 achieved? The fact that the position of a plant in the scale 

 of evolution is in accordance with its productiveness of 

 biological values is proof that there are definite bio-economic, 

 i.e., symbiotic methods of achieving progressive relatedness, 

 and that purely mechanical adjustments can at best be but 

 subordinate. 



" Other things equal," Spencer thinks that greater 

 correspondence must show itself in greater complexity of life, 

 and greater length of life, which is again quite plausible so 

 long as the proviso is read to contain the bio-economic implica- 

 tions that we have emphasised. 



Spencer, of course, perceives that there is a lack of 

 uniformity on his view of progress. But he consoles himself. 

 " It needs but to compare a microscopic fungus with an oak, 

 an animalcule with a shark, a mouse with a man, to recognise 

 the fact that this increasing correspondence of its changes with 

 those of the environment, which characterises progressing life, 



