THE LAW OF SYMBIOTIC MODERATION 141 



nutrition may be said to play the role of servants rather than of 

 masters. Indulgence is avoided, and choice and use of food are 

 so regulated as to serve the highest ends of the community pan 

 passu with those of individuality rather than those of the opposite 

 purpose, of mere sense gratification with unrestrained multiplica- 

 tion. Such is the way in which genuine " profits " are arrived 

 at in evolution. The way involves the roots of honour. Dis- 

 harmony of autonomies, on the other hand, leads, by way of a 

 loss of sense of proportion, to more or less " extreme determina- 

 tion " of the organism by the environment. Food and nutrition 

 become, as it were, the masters, at the expense of autonomy and 

 of progressive evolution. Notwithstanding superabundance of 

 nutrition, there is no genuine profit. There is, on the contrary, 

 a loss. Everywhere we get a contrasting evolutionary result in 

 accordance as to whether nutrition is the servant or the master 

 of the organism. It may be said, therefore, that the adage 

 " noblesse oblige " is as old as the hills. " Private " autonomy 

 has had to submit to limitations, to the superior demands of 

 communal autonomy from the first, and this in view of the 

 interdependence of life, and inasmuch as a gain of individuality 

 could only have been accomplished with the aid and sanction 

 of others of biological helpers, as instanced by the phenomena 

 of Symbiosis. We have seen that the system of natural ethics 

 as entailed by Symbiosis is all-important to life. We are 

 warranted, therefore, in interpreting the almost universal need 

 of restraint of feeding, characteristic of the reproductive period 

 of higher organisms, as typifying the law of " symbiotic 

 moderation." 



Such, then, is the secret of the mysterious protean power of 

 nutritio-i a power varying in evolutionary effects with auto- 

 nomy, with conscience, with honour, with duty. More often 

 than not, the important " geistige Band " (spiritual nexus), as 

 Goethe would have termed the relation of individual to communal 

 autonomy, is overlooked, with the result that the true and 

 complete significance of nutrition is lost sight of. Specialists 

 abhor inter-connections, and the specialists of inter-connection 

 itself are few and timid. To put the case of nutrition differently, 

 we may say that if the " business " of a species is at all needed 

 in the organic world, there have to be furnished adequate supplies 

 of food energy from the common fund of life, both for 

 maintenance and for reproduction. A species may be considered 



