280 SYMBIOGENESIS 



abundance of mutually fruitful relations, when there is a 

 proper appreciation of values; in short, when (biological) 

 virtue rules all over the world. 



Happiness, to me, also includes the possession of the 

 " treasures of the heart," and these require " love-foods," a 

 tolerable amount of security in their production, and a great 

 amount of mutual forbearance, mutual service and mutual 

 (that is systematic and symbiotic) activities. All of which is 

 antithetic to depredation, to exploitation and parasitic life of 

 every kind, as it is also antithetic to indiscriminate " digestive 

 transformation," such as results from in-feeding. 



Spencer's own tendency as regards biological status, it is 

 evident, was towards such criteria of "higher" and "lower" 

 as are supplied by my bio-economic theory. He was debarred 

 from realising the full significance of these criteria partly 

 because his views were too mechanical, and partly because the 

 far-reaching significance of nutrition and of symbiosis was 

 scarcely appreciated in his days. 



The same must be said of Darwin, who almost deprecated 

 any attempt to reach such criteria, although otherwise he must 

 be claimed as a pioneer of Bio-Economics. 



Xor have modern biologists been able to make any appre- 

 ciable advance on this position. Thus Le Dantec declares : 

 " II faut se mefier du mot progres "; and Prof. D. N. Paton 

 (Hibbert Journal, Jan., 1915) states: "What a high level is 

 we do not know." . . . "The process of evolution gives 

 no support to the idea of its being an advance towards some 

 abstract-perfection . ' ' 



The great stumbling block in every case is parasitism, i.e., 

 its proper valuation. 



Yet when we find Prof. Paton declaring that it is possible 

 that multicellular organisms arose by an aggregation of 

 separate units in mutual nutritional relationship to another 

 somatic cells thus grouping themselves round the genetic cells, 

 with further possibilities of modification in chemical changes 

 this is in more than one sense an approach to the symbiogenetic 



