358 SYMBIOGENESIS 



manifestation of, the same power whereby we are able to 

 remember intelligently what we did half an hour ago, 

 yesterday, or a twelvemonth since, and this in no figurative 

 but in a perfectly real sense." 



This view points to a kind of accumulation of mental 

 capital parallel to that of physiological capital, an almost 

 identical storing power appearing to be concerned in each case. 



If life be compared to an equation of a hundred unknown quantities, 

 I followed Professor Hering of Prague in reducing it to one of ninety- 

 nine only, by showing two of the supposed unknown quantities to be so 

 closely allied that they should count as one. I maintained that instinct 

 was inherited memory, and this without admitting more exceptions and 

 qualifying clauses than arise, as it were, by way of harmonics from 

 every proposition, and must be neglected if thought and language are 

 to be possible. 



He goes on to say : 



Among the things thus brought more comfortably home to us was 

 the principle underlying longevity. It became apparent why some 

 living beings should live longer than others, and how any race must 

 be treated whose longevity it is desired to increase. Hitherto we had 

 known that an elephant was a long-lived animal and a fly short-lived, 

 but we could give no reason why the one should live longer than the 

 other; that is to say, it did not follow in immediate coherence with, 

 or as intimately associated with, any familiar principle that an animal 

 which is late in the full development of ite reproductive system will 

 tend to Jive longer than one which reproduces early. If the theory of 

 " Life and Habit " be admitted, the fact of a slow-growing animal 

 being in general longer lived than a quick developer is seen to be con- 

 nected with, and to follow as a matter of course from, the fact of our 

 being able to remember anything at all, and all ihe well-known traits of 

 memory, as observed where we can best take note of them, are perceived 

 to be reproduced with singular fidelity in the development of an animal 

 from its embryonic stages to maturity. 



We have already supplied a symbiogenetic explanation of 

 longevity. We have seen that it depends on the capitalisation 

 of biological (social) values, which in turn depends on the 

 establishment of valuable symbiotic, i.e., sympathetic, bio- 

 logical correspondences. Hence the slow growth required to 

 satisfy so many correspondences. Butler's remark merely 



