356 SYMBIOGENESIS 



According to Butler there is a substantial identity between 

 heredity and memory, a " oneness of personality between 

 parents and offspring," and further: "Ideas are like plants 

 and animals in this respect also, as in so many others, that they 

 are more fully understood when their relations to other ideas 

 of their time, and the history of their development are known 

 and borne in mind." 



Is it indeed true that ideas share somewhat the physical 

 life of plants and animals? If so, this suggests that they are 

 also evolved and maintained by a kind of symbiogenesis 

 superposed on and parallel to that of physical genesis ; and I 

 believe this can be shown to be the fact. The improvement of 

 the mind, indeed, not only requires effort, but at times a 

 decided symbiotic effort, or " elan," i.e., a strong associative 

 mental effort, taxing both mind and body, as everybody who 

 has ever applied himself to hard study knows to his cost. Hence 

 it is with the genesis of mind as it is with sexual genesis it 

 requires a complete and long-standing co-operation of the units 

 involved. If we wish to have the highest achievements there 

 must be provided, I submit, opportunities for the highest forms 

 of domestic and biological symbiosis, which, I claim, are in 

 the long run the best guarantees of mens sana in corpore sano. 

 And this brings me to the chief point that I wish to urge in 

 this connection. I believe these symbiotic factors to be so 

 important in psychogenesis that to omit them is to lose sight 

 of half the mechanism concerned in this evolution. We have 

 already seen that Butler partly perceived the importance of 

 these deep-seated synthetic factors, for when he says that food 

 is very thoughtful, this is at least an adumbration of a close 

 and sympathetic relation between food (and what it entails in 

 work) and mind. 



It was only necessary to see what the thoughtfulness of 

 food amounted to, physically, psychologically and bio- 

 economically considered, to extend this idea further in 

 accordance with the law of symbiogenesis. Butler, indeed, in 

 a fine peroration (Luck or Cunning), presenting his final 



