154 SYMBIOSIS 



" work " is not sufficiently sociological, and he evidently lacks 

 a persistent principle regulating the work and the divisions of 

 labour and directing them into their right channels. 



Dr. Mansell Moullin invokes the authority of the late Prof. 

 Ehrlich to the effect that " the process of chemical evolution 

 is still going on." This fact to me scarcely seems to need proof. 

 Such evolution is still proceeding inasmuch as interaction and 

 work are still proceeding. 



In a dissertation upon tumour-formation, with its excessive 

 proliferation o-f cells, the question inevitably arises what is it 

 that, in normal days, keeps the cells, generation after genera- 

 tion of them, to their true work ? Is it from sheer inclination 

 or from compulsion that they keep to the path of integrity ? 

 And what is the nature of either or of both ? Some no doubt 

 would clinch the matter and shelve difficulties by answering 

 " natural compulsion." I contend that the most rational 

 explanation, which accounts for the specialisation of work and its 

 biological connections and for what " good will " and " compul- 

 sion " there exist, is one which considers the normal physiological 

 and biological relation of units to be one of Symbiosis. 



Obedience to the law of Symbiosis, compelled by bio-economic 

 and bio-social necessity, that is the compulsion and also the good 

 will in the matter of integrity of the cells. To transfer instead 

 compulsion and good will to the stars and nebulae is a mere 

 Naturalist's artifice, which should no longer be countenanced in 

 Biology, nor in modern thought. 



We are further told : 



The development of the individual is in part the product of the chemical 

 reactions that have taken place in its ancestors from time immemorial, 

 handed down by inheritance from generation to generation, in part the 

 result of the chemical changes that are taking place in its own tissues at 

 the present time. 



This is a mere " historical " instead of a qualitative, account. 

 There is no allusion to the fact that we may have in the organism 

 before us a " damnosa hereditas." Yet this should be fully noted ; 

 and nowhere more than in a dissertation upon pathological 

 growth. A race or a species may have behaved badly, i.e., anti- 

 biotically for more than one generation, and its physiology and 

 bio-chemistry must consequently be abnormal in commensurate 

 degrees. Dr. Mansell Moullin states further : 



The essential point is that all development, like growth, is ultimately 

 the outcome of chemical changes in the tissues and that everything that 



