376 SYMBIOGENESIS 



admitted, which we have already seen prove fatal; answer "no," and 

 we must deny that one part of the body is more vital than another 

 and this is refusing to go as far even as common sense does ; answer 

 that these things are not very important, and we quit the ground of 

 equity and high philosophy on which we have given ourselves such airs, 

 and go back to common sense as unjust judges that will hear those 

 widows only who importune us. 



Evidently there are different degrees of " livingness," in 

 substances as well as in animate bodies, and these differences, 

 as we have seen, it is best to distinguish according to bio- 

 logical, i.e., symbiogenetic values. 



Butler concludes that "the only way out of the difficulty 

 is to rehabilitate contradiction in terms, and say that every- 

 thing is both alive and dead at one and the same time some 

 things being much living and little dead, and others, again, 

 much dead and little living." 



A better way, as I have said, seems to be to classify things 

 according to their biological value. It is also necessary to 

 recognise that some things, although living, are yet partly 

 dead, precisely in so far as they have according to an 

 Emersonian metaphor too much guano (impurities) in their 

 composition, i.e., through work being impaired. 



As with life and death, so with design and absence of 

 design or luck, Butler thinks "there is always a little place 

 left for repentance; that is to say, in theory we should admit 

 that both design and chance, however well defined, each have 

 an aroma, as it were, of the other," and, he continues, " This 

 having been explained, and it being understood that when we 

 speak of design in organisms we do so with a mental reserve of 

 exceptis excipiendis, there should be no hesitation in holding 

 the various modifications of plants and animals to be in such 

 preponderating measure due to function, that design, which 

 underlies function, is the fittest idea with which to connect 

 them in our minds." 



There seems justice in Butler's contention that we cannot 

 do entirely without " design," and his remarks may be said to 

 find a practical illustration in the case of "love-foods" a 



