274 SYMBIOGENESIS 



antagonism (according to values) makes an end of every bio- 

 logical iniquity. The "multiform beast " (an expression used 

 long since by Plato to characterise one who in Scriptural phrase 

 "enlarges his desire as hell") constantly loses in survival 

 capacity, and still variation remains in a definite direction. It 

 is quite true that an initial false step, if persisted in, may prove 

 the final undoing of a species, but the establishment of new 

 habits cannot be a mere matter of accident, seeing that all 

 organisms persist in virtue of those definite bio-economic 

 specialisations which they have embraced. Upon any change 

 of environment, the old habits and conditions will largely 

 determine the choice of new. Apart from this, by calling for 

 renewed (symbiotic) efforts a change of environment in the 

 majority of cases will in itself act as a means of bio-economic 

 regularisation, just as inter-crossing, according to Darwin, 

 " plays a very important part in Nature in keeping the 

 individuals of the same species, or of the variety, true and 

 uniform in character" (i.e., in Spencerian parlance, "the 

 idiosyncratic divergences obliterate each other "). 



I am quite at one with Spencer in believing that 

 functional divergences once established and having lasted long 

 enough must have profound effects, but I do not overlook, as 

 he does, the fact that normally a threefold line of defence 

 against any extreme or sudden divergences, viz., digestion, 

 fertilisation, symbiogenetic momentum, has to be broken down 

 before a retrogressive modification can be established, and that 

 thus, in reality, the most powerful factors there are, normally 

 make for definite and uniform progress of variations. 



And thus the importance of function, as determining 

 variation, is seen in an entirely new light, and we are 

 justified in speaking of such biological development in terms of 

 values (which are due to function) where previously we spoke 

 in terms of accident or of mere Newtonian mechanics. 



Spencer admits in a following chapter that: "Besides 

 owing to the external world those energies which, from 

 moment to moment, keep up the lives of its individual 



