BIONOMICS 279 



what are usually termed pathogenic organisms, which are 

 found associated with diseased and aggravating conditions, 

 without troubling, for instance, about the occasional preying of, 

 say, plant on plant or mammal on mammal. The Bible is far 

 more outspoken on this matter than is Spencer, and the writer 

 of the book of Job in particular here shows an insight deeper 

 than that of Spencer's by adumbrating the value of cross- 

 feeding : 



There is a path which no bird of prey knoweth 

 And which the vulture's eye hath not seen; 

 The lion's whelps have not trodden it 

 Nor the fierce lion passed by it. 



Again, the "supremacy and multiplication of the best" 

 in Spencer's philosophy seems to require an expedient proviso, 

 such as "be they what they may"! The parasites and 

 depredators are not the best, nor are they supreme as he seems 

 to. admit. Yet parasites multiply most rapidly, and, as Spencer 

 himself reminds us (p. 342) : "Of the animal kingdom as a 

 whole, more than half the species are parasites." Indeed, 

 that the evils accompanying evolution are ever being self- 

 eliminated seems to come in rather as an after-thought of 

 Spencer's, seeing that he has failed adequately to draw any 

 definite line between good and evil factors in the biological 

 world, as he has also failed to show whence the main 

 eliminative forces proceed. If we rationally allow for the 

 frailty of life its proclivity to follow the lines of least 

 resistance, to let its activities flow into wrong channels there 

 is indeed not the slightest need to have recourse to a theory of 

 "gratuitous malevolence." 



" Sure of qualities demanding praise, 

 More go to ruin fortunes, than to raise." 



Spencer in the above passage rather suddenly introduces 

 " happiness" ; but biological happiness must chiefly consist of 

 days of happy productiveness, when symbiogenesis is allowed 

 to proceed without serious obstacles, when there is an 



