LIFE AND HABIT 97 



My answer is that our best safeguard is the symbiotic sense, 

 the sense of biological propriety, implanted in us by Nature, 

 which sense ever impels us towards moderation and integrity 

 in all our doings. It is the sense of proportion and of justice, 

 which fundamentally arises from the Psychism peculiar to the 

 symbiotic life. This important sense may be seriously inter- 

 fered with or jeopardised by false feeding habits. These, as 

 shown before, tend to encourage the idlers and would-be 

 parasites amongst the world of micro-organisms at the expense 

 of strenuous and moderate partners. They tend, in other words, 

 to create a soil favourable to " infection," to distract the exist- 

 ing wholesome influences and in the end to give a new, a path- 

 ological turn to our actions and thoughts distorting them in many 

 ways. " For the good which I would I do not : but the evil 

 which I would not that I practise." Once loosened from sym- 

 biotic bonds, our former modest associates develop more and more 

 insatiable appetites, the need for the satisfaction of which drives 

 the unfortunate " host " to otherwise involuntary excesses, 

 which render his life increasingly unbalanced and precarious. 

 The unhappy " host " may thus be morbidly impelled, as Plato 

 would say, towards the tyrannical disposition a curse alike 

 to himself and to the " City." Good health in the case of such 

 a " host " would often seem to depend upon abundant feeding, 

 a " Royal diet," which inference, however, may easily be 

 deceptive, as great supplies are wanted to feed his associated 

 parasites alone. So disgracefully have we, however, become 

 habituated to associate health and even distinction with a 

 pampered state of the body, that we think it most natural for a 

 " fat " man to maintain at the highest pitch the unholy " love- 

 affairs " of his unregulated body. Such and similar discre- 

 pancies are in keeping with our social and mental backwardness, 

 related in turn to our false feeding habits, which rob us of the 

 fruits of a healthy Pan-Psychism. It may be considered as 

 a concomitant of our faulty mentality that orthodox science 

 cannot even tell us what is a standard metabolism or a standard 

 biological relation. Many nutrition experiments produce ficti- 

 tious results, the appearance of health being falsely taken for the 

 reality, the abuse for the use observations provoquees, as 

 Claude Bernard would say. It is futile, for instance, to expect 

 that a species long used to biological abuse and false feeding 

 and, hence, to many concomitant " special " influences, cravings 



