30 SYMBIOSIS 



implies that no individual or race exists for itself ; that all have 

 to contribute their share of progress to organic civilisation, that 

 all have to give freely as they also freely receive ; that all have to 

 help in upholding the law of Concord if they are to survive, rather 

 than behave in an anti-symbiotic manner ; and thus there will 

 be scope for mutual elevation rather than for mutual plunder 

 with ensuing stagnancy and retrogression. With sufficient 

 vision we should see that the distribution of real power in the 

 biological polity is similar to the circulation of blood in the 

 healthy body : all correlated parts are reached and remunerated 

 in accordance with their biological dues, and all make their 

 return contribution in various ways so as to merit again in turn 

 more or less remuneration from the general symbiotic fund of the 

 biological polity. 



Only in a highly diseased body, the rule of Reciprocity does 

 not hold good, since in this case for reasons so far considered 

 as mysterious it appears that the physiological " control " is 

 gone, that there is a subversion of the " ordinary laws " (whatever 

 they may be) which " we must assume " to govern the proportions 

 and proper relations of tissue growth. Tumours, for example, 

 are, contrary to what is the rule with normal structures, 

 imperfectly provided with blood vessels, and, hence, subject to early 

 decay, the resulting cavities or open wounds being exposed to 

 various harmful secondary infections. Cancer, therefore, repre- 

 sents a case of Discord. There is a physiological bankruptcy 

 owing to insufficiency of symbiotic funds and in the ensuing 

 scramble for " funds " some cells of the body, the so-called 

 " cancer-cells," draw parasitically on the other tissues to the 

 ultimate exhaustion of the body-cells and to their own final doom. 

 The case is paralleled throughout by the phenomenon of 

 parasitism in Nature. In either case it is generally to be seen 

 that " rich " and abundant, yet still incomplete, diet has led up 

 to a slackening and finally a disappearance of the essential 

 symbiotic factors with the identical result of increased liability 

 to retrogressive development, to disease and infection. 



Darwin rightly laid stress on the greater health and powers 

 of resistance and the greater constitutional vigour, exhibited by 

 the cross-fertilised plants in his experiments in Fertilisation. 

 The reason is that cross-breeding, like cross-feeding, implies a 

 more extended symbiotic range of life with ampler opportunities 

 for biological exchanges than do in-breeding and in-feeding 



