LA VIE NORM ALE 125 



verdict of geological history in these matters is this, that con- 

 stitution, health and form of organisms are pre-eminently 

 determined by bio-economic factors, demanding above all recipro- 

 city and moderation from all forms of life. The evidence of the 

 rocks, re-inforced by clinical experience, bears witness to the fact 

 that there is a normal life, i.e., one characterised by normal 

 industry, normal nuirition and normal form. These conjoint 

 normals I have found owe their existence to a normal, i.e., 

 mainly co-operative or symbiotic relation as between organism 

 and biological community at large. The non-symbiotic relation, 

 on the other hand, being apt to lead to unrestrained and 

 unredemptive self-indulgence, easily tends to pervert and to 

 undermine those " normals " with the result of comparatively 

 licentious growth. The organism lives for self rather than for 

 the common good. What it gains on the one hand, it loses, 

 however, on the other. That is to say, its gains of size are at 

 the expense of biological support and sanction and of survival- 

 capacity. Here then we have the dividing line between phy- 

 siological and pathological development. In my books on 

 Nutrition and Evolution and Survival and Reproduction I 

 have treated of teratology and monstrosity, and of sexual 

 dimorphism (antithesis of size) from the same point of view as 

 here set forth. The subject is dealt with more particularly 

 from the medical point of view in my little work on Evolution 

 by Co-operation (1913), where special references may be seen 

 on pages 6, 64-6, 69, 77-79, 171, 186-7. On P a g e 66 of that book, 

 moreover, attention is specially called to the deterioration of 

 character as a concomitant of the acromegalic diathesis. As 

 instances of pathological increase of size in Nature, I have 

 mentioned the dinosauria, the living and extinct monstrous 

 birds, the whales and elephants, the monstrous insects and 

 monstrous plants. I have also tried to show that the more 

 intense the degree of " in-feeding," or of depredation on the part, 

 of a species, the more pronounced is the (parasitic) diathesis 

 and the resulting monstrosity. 



I have further demonstrated (p. 79) that inversely, with a 

 return to a more symbiotic mode of life, i.e., with a re-conversion 

 from in- to cross-feeding, the diathesis may be reduced, the 

 organism returning to a more normal condition of size. The 

 acromegalic diathesis, however, is hereditary, and, though a 

 cure by reconversion be possible, in the majority of cases found 



