26 SYMBIOSIS 



an increment of useful " synthetic mechanism." I would, 

 therefore, propound the view that food is capable of transmitting 

 essential and quasi-genetic stimulation and, further, that the 

 effectiveness and the true legitimacy of food ultimately depend 

 upon harmonious and reciprocal relatiors between food supplier 

 and food-recipient, i.e., upon an adequate symbiotic nexus 

 analogous indeed to that obtaining between the sexes. 



Unfortunately the study of Correlation and of Reciprocity 

 in Nature has hitherto been neglected, more so even than that 

 of Nutrition, and it is little surprising therefore, that to many the 

 attempt to draw a distinction between legitimate or illegitimate 

 feeding will appear almost fantastic. With Correlation and 

 Reciprocity left out of the reckoning, there is indeed scarcely 

 an alternative but to assume that whatever an organism has 

 somehow been accustomed to in the way of foods, constitutes 

 its normal and also its " legitimate " food. Such doctrines, of 

 course, are particularly pleasing to those quibus in solo vivendi 

 causa palato est, and some would carry their logic so far a? to 

 maintain that in the practice of life one may with impunity 

 disregard Symbiosis and inter-relatedness (or, for the matter of 

 that, the sanctity) of life generally. 



La recherche de la paternite est interdite so ran Napoleon's 

 brutal code, and a number of gourmands would apparently 

 like to have it thus : La recherche de la legalite de la nutrition est 

 interdite , but it can be abundantly shown that indiscriminate 

 feeding, regardless of Symbiosis, everywhere results in disease, 

 in retrogression, and in nemesis. There are no short cuts to 

 enduring gains in the physiological sphere any more than in the 

 social sphere of life. Here as there it is true, as Bacon said, 

 that the shortest way is commonly the foulest. 



Darwin has shown how felonious food-getting on the part of 

 the bee produces a vicious biological circle, whilst it is apt 

 thoroughly to " debauch " the bee itself. The same sequence 

 of cause and effect is universally observable, as I have been at 

 some pains to demonstrate in every one of my books. A plant 

 that fails to draw mineral salts from the earth will not form 

 regular fibrous tissue of any value and must be the poorer in 

 " capital " and in survival- value. Organisms that draw their 

 nourishment in parasitic fashion from others, instead of obtaining 

 it by work, become as degraded as they become dangerous 

 and thus liable to be exterminated by every means in the power 



