366 SYMBIOGENESIS 



a complex of memories inherited from every previous plane and form 

 of existence, planes and forms of which we have no recollection save 

 such as may lurk in some underlying cell of consciousness to contribute 

 its quotum when needed, so that a man may divine the way of an atom, 

 the soul of a flower, the heart of a bird, by power of eddies stirring 

 somewhere in him for remembrance, one understands better, surely, 

 this luminous book of the Mind on every particle whereof Life has writ 

 indelibly its wondrous story. 



The brain and nervous system are thus a psychical organism which 

 Mind has evolved out of Matter, and by means of which, in the ever 

 closer and more complex association of itself with Matter, Mind mani- 

 fests in Life. 



That ancestral dynamics count for as much in Psychology 

 as in Biology is again insisted upon by Butler: 



What it (the body) will think to its advantage depends mainly on 

 the past habits of its race. Its past and now invisible lives will influence 

 its desires more powerfully than anything it may itself be able to add 

 to the sum of its likes and dislikes; nevertheless, over and above pre- 

 conceived opinion and the habits to which all are slaves, there is a 

 small salary, or, as it were, agency commission, which each may have 

 for himself, and spend according to his fancy ; from this, indeed, 

 income-tax must be deducted ; still there remains a little margin of 

 individual taste, and here, high up on this narrow, inaccessible ledge 

 of our souls, from year to year a breed of not unprolific variations build 

 where reason cannot reach them to despoil them; for de gustibus non 

 est disputandum. 



The place of individual dynamics and of genius in the life 

 of a race is thus also hinted at. Independent thought and action 

 are frequently of transcendent value, as Butler's own example 

 indeed bears out. But, contrary even to Butler's opinion, the 

 Bio-dynamics here concerned are more than a mere matter of 

 taste and of accident, and they depend rather more on bio- 

 economic factors than on "fancy"; i.e., even the personal 

 equation is largely influenced by these pre-detennining factors, 

 to the influence of which much that is commonly ascribed to 

 <lesign or as lucky coincidence must be set down. 

 That genius shall arise is not a mere matter of 

 accident or of taste, nor even of a sudden jump, but 

 it is due to the long protracted gestation of Nature (in Robert 



