PSYCHOGENES1S 363 



le spectacle d'aucune creation, elle est d'une eternelle 

 continuation," to which he retorts : " but surely he is insisting 

 upon one side of the truth only, to the neglect of another which 

 is just as real, and just as important; he might have said, 

 ' Rien ne se continue, tout nait, tout se cree. La nature ne 

 nous offre le spectacle d'aucune continuation. Elle est d'une 

 eternelle creation ' ; for change is no less patent a fact than 

 continuity, and, indeed, the two stand or fall together." 



Here again Butler's view is superior and is backed up by 

 recent philosophical and psychological opinions, and it may 

 also be said to be congruous with my symbiogenetic view. The 

 same may be said of the following: 



To think is to fuse and diffuse ideas, and to fuse and diffuse ideas 

 is to feed. We can all feed, and by consequence within reasonable 

 limits we can fuse ideas ; or we can fuse ideas, and by consequence 

 within reasonable limits we can feed ; we know not which comes first, 

 the food or the ideas, but we must not overtax our strength; the 

 moment we do this we taste of death. 



Modern Psychology looks indeed to subjective interests for 

 the explanation of the synthesis of many important motor and 

 sensory presentations (perceptions) ; expressed in Butler's 

 phraseology: "Form varies as function and function as 

 opinion concerning advantage." Modern Psychology here, 

 however, relies upon Biology, which is notoriously backward 

 in everything appertaining to nutrition, and hence it sadly 

 misjudges the most important subjective interest of all, viz., 

 food with all the psychological implications that it involves. 



Butler's reference to food in this connection shows the 

 depth of his insight, although he rests content with a general 

 warning of the frequently precarious nature of the mysterious 

 synthesis involved in the mutual relations between body and 

 mind. 



Looking (with Erasmus Darwin) upon a new generation 

 not as a new thing, but as "a branch or elongation " of the 

 one immediately preceding it, he tells us: " Instinct is know- 

 ledge or habit acquired in past generations the new genera- 

 tion remembering what happened to it before it parted 



