92 SYMBIOSIS 



Symbiosis pari passu with the growing " beneficent " necessities 

 of " organic civilisation," and they merely helped to " create " 

 the animal kingdom in their own " symbiotic likeness/' i.e., 

 according to useful reciprocal differentiation. 



There was nothing " unexpected " or sudden in the coming 

 of the animal. Moreover, if the plant had to adapt itself pro- 

 gressively to the rising animal world, so the latter had to adapt 

 itself increasingly to the laws of Bio-morality, conformed to 

 already by the plant, i.e., mainly symbiotic morality. Granted 

 that evolution means inter alia intelligent progress, this does 

 not make the term " Evolution " by any means a synonym for 

 " adaptation " and " modification/' The latter may be, and 

 often are, the reverse of progress. The vagueness of the term 

 " Evolution " is precisely due to the sophism which I have always 

 combated, of synonymising it with " adaptation " and 

 " modification." 



Failing to obtain the concrete footing of Bio-Economics 

 Maeterlinck is inclined to postulate the existence of a " Demi- 

 urgos " a " genie de la Terre," or " Erdgeist," a similar 

 conception to that which attracted Goethe, Fechner, J. S. Mill 

 and William James. This " Demiurgos " would stand in a kind 

 of paternal relation to all of us. 



II use des memes methodes, de la meme logique. II atteint au but par 

 les moyens que nous emploierons, il tatonne, il hesite, il s'y reprend a 

 plusieurs fois, il ajoute, il elimine, il reconnait et redresse ses erreurs comme 

 nous le ferions a sa place. Notre esprit puise aux memes reservoirs que 

 le sien. Nous sommes du meme monde, presque entre egaux. 



As regards intelligence and its distribution, we get a pan- 

 psychic view thus : 



It would not, I imagine, be very bold to maintain that there are not 

 any more or less intelligent beings, but a scattered, genera], intelligence, 

 a kind of universal fluid that penetrates diversely the organisms which 

 it encounters according as they are good or bad conductors of the under- 

 standing. Man would then represent up till now, upon this earth, the 

 mode of life that offers the least resistance to this fluid, which the religions 

 called divine. 



Be this as it may, one thing is certain in whatever sphere of 

 life we choose to look, namely, that, other things equal, the best 

 results in evolution accrue from a symbiotic vitalisation of the 

 protoplasm. Just as the symbiotic lichen is capable, in pioneer 



