8 SYMBIOSIS 



to the Bio-Chemistry of the higher plants and of animals. The 

 higher forms of bacteria also are capable in virtue of Symbiosis 

 of enriching the soil and plant by the fixation of atmospheric 

 nitrogen. 



Given therefore a sufficiency of symbiotic endeavour, there 

 will result an ever growing range of fruitful and reliable cor- 

 relations, and these profitable correlations are as so many external 

 supports, links or tools of life veritable investments of accumu- 

 lated marginal or surplus capital. They are sources of further 

 outside services and of various supplementary and complementary 

 supplies, indispensable to progressive life. Just as in the advance 

 of human civilisation, so in Nature the widespread establishment 

 of numerous mutually beneficial " trade " systems with their 

 corresponding momenta for " work/' for " order," for systematic 

 mutuality in short the need for preservation of " social " 

 values acted as so much pressure ii\ the direction of a further 

 general advance. This pressure is implied in the concept of 

 " Symbiogenesis," by which I mean the direction given to evolution 

 by the long-continued operation of Symbiosis in the production 

 of higher forms of life and in the more complete development of 

 beneficial relations between them. 



The terrestrial conditions of life, for instance, are more 

 favourable than aquatic to the advance of Symbiosis, owing to 

 greater security and better opportunities for mutuality and 

 beneficial correlations, in short for " trade." Upon the land a 

 far greater number of symbiotic momenta could therefore arise 

 and push each other on unceasingly ; and the result is that it 

 is upon the land that we find the most developed, the most 

 advanced and the most intelligent animals. 



We saw in the case of the lichen that work, accumulation of 

 valuable capital, health, longevity, and generally wholesome 

 influences go together, and we stressed the fact that such happy 

 configuration of " good " factors easily becomes instrumental 

 to vitally important " pioneer "-work ; all of which is really of 

 transcendent importance, not only so far as our economic parallel 

 is concerned, but also as a lesson in organic Sociology and in 

 " Evolution " generally. For it is the " pioneer " that matters. 

 The mysterious " common progenitor," so often invoked by 

 Evolutionists as a kind of deus ex machind of descent, what is he if 

 not a pioneer one who by strenuous and mainly symbiotic effort, 

 by wholesome capitalisation, built up essential " endowments " 



