THE LAW OF CONCORD IN NATURE 31 



respectively. The " cross," in either case, is associated with 

 the more widely useful mode of life. This ensures correspondingly 

 wider symbiotic supports, or greater " returns," which results in 

 dominance, vitality, and resistance to disease. What in the 

 previous chapter we found to be the natural fountain of Justice, 

 thus emerges here again as the true fountain of Health and 

 Power. 



Darwin noticed in the case of Linaria vulgaris that the crossed 

 plants proved more vigorous than the self-fertilised, and he also 

 tells us that " bees incessantly visit the flowers of this, i.e., the 

 cross-fertilised Linaria, and carry pollen from one to the 

 other ; and if insects are excluded, the flowers produce extremely 

 few seeds. This, in my view, is typical of the superiority of the 

 symbiotic life over the non-symbiotic as represented by the 

 in-breeding and in-feeding modes for, evidently, the former 

 mode involves a. widely fruitful intercourse with a happy con- 

 summation in correlated progress, arising from extended mutual 

 usefulness, whilst in-breeding and in-feeding modes, with much 

 narrower and more specially self-regarding intercourse, mean 

 relative stagnancy. Another phenomenon that puzzled Darwin 

 is thus also becoming intelligible : the startling amount of expendi- 

 ture apparently lavished by some organisms towards the attain- 

 ment of cross-fertilisation. I would view this expenditure as 

 the price paid by the organism for the privilege of due participa- 

 tion in the onward march of organic civilisation and for genuine 

 survival, and particularly so by reason of the fact that the 

 material here in question, which is abundantly produced, i.e., 

 pollen grains, subserves a double, i.e., a domestic and a biological 

 symbiotic purpose. 



We can thus understand how it is that longevity is generally 

 related to the standard, i.e., the biological status, of each species 

 in the scale of organisation, as well as to the amount of expenditure 

 in reproduction and in general activity. The secret precisely 

 consists of a widely useful life which shrinks from no sacrifice 

 to merit a permanent place in the forefront of organic civilisation. 

 It consists in a kind of instinctive " wisdom," which proverbially 

 has length of days in her right hand. 



The lichen, as was shown in the previous chapter, represents a 

 typical case of a healthy, long-living, resistant and successful 

 organism, clearly distinguished and dominant in virtue of 

 Symbiosis. What is usually overlooked, however, in this 



