THE ECONOMY OF NATURE 17 



amongst animals shows that the animal does not, as a norm, 

 act indiscriminately as a plant-devourer or plant-destroyer ; but 

 it appropriates only certain parts of the plant, the loss of which 

 by no means necessarily leaves the plant the poorer. The plant 

 is the richer in the end for what is legitimately taken from it. x 



Fechner suggested that plant and animal should be regarded 

 as ' ' gleichwiegende Faktoren eines lebendigen Wechselver- 

 haltnisses " (co-equal factors of a vital reciprocity), and he 

 regarded the whole of human, animal and vegetable kingdoms 

 as indissolubly inter-evolved and inter-linked and forming with 

 the inorganic systems of our globe a " zweckvoll verkniipftes 

 Ganze " (a purposefully inter-linked whole). 



This led him on to the idea that with the general progress 

 of things, the blemishes of nature may perhaps gradually diminish 

 or cease to exist altogether. This is similar to Herbert Spencer's 

 idea concerning the evanescence of evil. Both alluded to some 

 such all-pervading principle of life as Symbiogenesis, which 

 makes for organic and moral values at the same time as it makes 

 for progress and order generally. Spencer declares that " evil 

 perpetually tends to disappear " in virtue of an (un-named) 

 " essential principle of life." 



Fechner says in his Uber die Seelenfrage : 



But in the cosmic process disharmonies may last for a millenium in 

 order to be dissolved into harmony in a subsequent one. . . . The 

 dissolution of evil is caused by, and consists in the fact of its being anta- 

 gonistic to the grand order of things, whereby it stimulates re-actions, 

 which latter augment with the evil and finally surpass it in growth, so that 

 not only is the evil removed, but it is, as it were, transformed into good, 

 and becomes a source of good. It therefore differs from good only because 

 good is a direct source of furthering the purposes of the grand order of 

 things, whilst evil becomes indirectly a source of good. 



It is clear that once we concede a wider " biological citizen- 

 ship " with its bio-economic and associated bio-moral impli- 

 cations, the old stumbling block of " good and evil " can be 

 largely removed, whilst the wider perspective thus obtained 

 lends itself to a sounder conception of values in many directions 

 where previously uncertainty and doubt prevailed. Once the 

 world-wide web of bio-economic evolution is perceived, it becomes 

 clear that much of the suffering in the world is of a retributive 

 character, and therefore a potential factor for good. Pessi- 

 mism, on the score of Nature's alleged callousness or cruelty 

 should, therefore, be ruled out of court. 



