BIONOMICS 263 



vailing at the origin of its species, and that also it has firmly 

 established a number of biological correspondences on which it 

 can rely as a human being can rely upon tools. Reliance on 

 the web of life, and corresponding adaptation, is up to a certain 

 point quite legitimate. So long as the specialisation permits 

 the continuance of bio-economic usefulness on sufficiently 

 broad lines to prevent the arrival at a blind alley, physiological 

 division may depute a great deal of activity to automatic func- 

 tion, i.e., to fixed organs. What is thus demanded of every 

 organism and of every species in order to achieve survival is, 

 as we have seen, a certain loyalty to the great cosmic, i.e., 

 symbiotic principles of life generally. Though the specialisa- 

 tion is great in the highest organisms, and though frequently 

 they quite legitimately rely upon a number of symbiotic 

 external fixtures, yet, as we have seen, they require to be passed 

 through the unicellular state, and this for the very reason of 

 preserving them duly symbiotic, i.e., for symbiogenetic 

 purposes, which are the opposite ones of selfish "over- 

 specialisation " and of disease. 



We may here also in passing note that Spencer ventures 

 the opinion that " function is from beginning to end the deter- 

 mining cause of structure." 



H. WASTE AND REPAIR. 



The deductive interpretation of the phenomena of Repair, 

 according to Spencer, is by no means easy. " The tendency 

 displayed by an animal organism, as well as by each of its 

 organs, to return to a state of integrity by the assimilation of 

 new matter, when it has undergone the waste consequent on 

 activity, is a tendency which is not manifestly deducible from 

 first principles, though it appears to be in harmony with 

 them." 



Then there is "the relative assimilation " by which the 

 repair of organs is effected that wants accounting for, seeing 

 that organs are in part made up of units that do not exist as 

 such in the circulating fluids. 



