2 SYMBIOSIS 



we require to have a due and reliable account of what they have 

 achieved, both singly and in conjunction. The rendering of this 

 account involves the study of what I have called "Bio-Economics," 

 a branch of Biology, the value of which I have set myself the 

 task to get properly recognised. I contend that the closer study 

 of this Bio-Economics the knowledge of that which makes for 

 true economy in the world of life can no longer be avoided. 

 Otherwise the biological and sociological outlook will continue 

 to be hazy and ill-defined. We cannot remain content to be 

 ignorant of what really constitutes the distinction between the 

 reciprocal and the non-reciprocal, the useful and the wasteful, 

 i.e., the physiological and the pathological, or, as I might also 

 say, the legitimate and the illegitimate, the moral and the immoral 

 activities. 



Darwin believed that a knowledge of variation under 

 Domestication would afford the best and safest clue to the 

 means of modifications. Now, in the light of later biological 

 study, I strongly demur to this, since, in my view, Domestication 

 of the animal is very similar to slavery in the human world and 

 is productive of abnormal and often evil results, as Darwin and 

 others have seen. 



Buffon long ago recognised that Domestication produces 

 very grave ill-effects upon animals. He says that " the stigmata 

 of their captivity, the marks of their chains, can be seen upon all 

 those animals which man has enslaved." He speaks of the " ills 

 of slavery " as a main cause of degeneration. 



Darwin, in his turn, admits in his Variations of Animals and 

 Plants under Domestication,, that domestic races of animals 

 and cultivated races of plants often exhibit an abnormal character, 

 as compared with natural species because " they have been modified 

 not for their own benefit, but for that of man," and he also 

 concedes that the higher variability of domestic productions 

 may perhaps in part be due to excess of food that is, strictly 

 speaking, a pathological cause. That " fatty degeneration " 

 and precocity are only too frequently induced by Domestication 

 is, of course, well known. Recent research has confirmed the 

 view that the usual methods of Domestication are pregnant with 

 unwholesome results upon the constitution of the organism, 

 that they retard or inhibit its progressive evolution, and it has 

 also brought to light the fact that they are often fraught with 

 undesirable reactions upon man. 



