16 SYMBIOSIS 



which he has otherwise had good reason to detest. I should say 

 that normally the intervention of neither mice nor cats is 

 necessary for the success of the plant. What is necessary and 

 indispensable is the Symbiosis between red clover and humble- 

 bee. Such Symbiosis primarily determines the numbers of the 

 clover and of the bee. Only in so far as predaceous disturbers 

 of Symbiosis have arisen, is there a need of the intervention 

 of the feline. Necessary though its intervention may be, it is 

 a secondary factor belonging to the utilisation even of partial 

 evil for ultimate purposes of progress. The intervention of the 

 mice is, bio-economically speaking, to quite opposite purposes 

 to that of the bees. That of the mice is noxious and not wanted ; 

 that of the bees is essential, fruitful, and evidently desiderated. 

 Unless we draw such qualitative distinctions, we are in danger 

 of arriving at false values, at so preposterous a conception, 

 for instance, as that which looks upon the most thriftless, the 

 robbers and executioners as the mainstays of life. That Darwin 

 was in danger of arriving at some such paradoxical position may 

 be seen from his utterance on the last page of the Origin, that 



" from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted objects 

 which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher 

 animals directly follows." 



It is not enough to demonstrate the existence of inter- 

 relations and of checks, it is necessary to elucidate the nature 

 of either and this with reference to abiding values. Darwin's 

 remarks that humble-bees alone visit red clover, other bees not 

 being able to reach the nectar, is of some importance in organic 

 sociology. It may be said to illustrate the case of exclusion 

 from want of symbiotic adaptation. What becomes of the 

 excluded animals, we might ask ? They must either seek other 

 symbiotic adaptations, or, failing to do so, and failing re-con- 

 version, be content with less and less wholesome adaptations, 

 which means retrogressive evolution and an increasingly pre- 

 carious existence, albeit such degenerating types may pass 

 through numerous outwardly conspicuous phases of robber 

 existence giving them a fictitious appearance of health and 

 even of viability. Divorce from Symbiosis is fatal. There 

 is no greater error than that which consists in the belief that in 

 Nature the robber and murderer is equally sanctioned with 

 the industrious organism. And let it here be said that a general 

 survey of the feeding practices of the exclusive plant-feeders 



