io6 SYMBIOSIS 



in so many words, that the mind, like the body, requires to be 

 recurrently subjected to a refining process, which is best per- 

 formed whilst body and mind are in the plastic state. In that 

 state they can best receive those subtle stimulations which we 

 may suppose Vitamines capable of conveying which, with the 

 concurrence of all organisms, tend to produce an effective and 

 well-balanced biological citizen. Needless to say, the view here 

 expressed is calculated to open up new lines of thought alike 

 for Philosophy and for Science. For, if it be, indeed, that in the 

 plastic state body and mind receive essential preliminary 

 cosmo- or bio-economic " education," it follows that our minds 

 are not so purely or exclusively human in bias as has been 

 supposed by some thinkers. Though it be true that, as Poincare 

 says, " we can only think our own thoughts," yet our obliga- 

 tions in the matter are more profound than he assumes. And 

 our minds are not so exclusively anthropomorphic in origin, 

 character and a^m, as a recent writer, Professor J. B. Baillie, 

 Hibbert Journal, April, 1917, basing himself on Poincare, assumes. 



Butler was unable to carry the embryological analogy far 

 enough because the full significance of Fertilisation was scarcely 

 realised in his days. Although he is aware that Reproduction 

 entails a strenuous business, and that if we do not improve, 

 we grow worse, he fails to realise that such vital processes as 

 Fertilisation and Nutrition serve quite as much as safeguards 

 of racial and bio-economic integrity as they serve the multi- 

 plication of the species. 



It must be admitted (Butler says), that when we come to consider 

 the structures as well as the instincts of some of the neuter insects, our 

 difficulties seem greatly increased. Nevertheless, it must not be forgotten 

 that bees seem to know secrets about reproduction, which utterly baffle 

 ourselves ; for example, the queen-bee appears to know how to deposit 

 male or female eggs at will ; and this is a matter of almost inconceivable 

 sociological importance, denoting a corresponding amount of sociological 

 and physiological knowledge generally. It should not, then, surprise 

 us if the race should possess other secrets, whose working we are unable- 

 to follow, or even detect at all. 



Finally he gets over his difficulty by saying that structure 

 and instinct are alike due, if not to mere memory, then, at any 

 rate, to " medicined " memory. He discerns at last that 

 memory requires appropriate food symbiotic food, as is so well 

 borne out by the case of the bee. I have elsewhere pointed out 

 that the notorious ill-effects of felonious honey-getting upon 



