THE ORIGIN OF MORALITY 49 



results under the guidance of a persistent and beneficial bio- 

 economic principle, namely, Symbiogenesis, the difference of 

 point of view would have been immense. Nor would the 

 scientific view of morality have incurred the contumely so 

 abundantly and undeservedly heaped upon it since the coming 

 of " Natural Selection." We have already seen in the previous 

 chapters that most of the aforesaid claims in favour of Symbiosis, 

 as a useful fundamental and far-reaching form of co-operation 

 can be well substantiated. We found, for instance, that the 

 earliest unicellular creatures, some of the bacteria, already lived 

 in symbiotic relations with manifold and truly astounding 

 success in the way of organic progress. How pertinent were 

 Darwin's words that much had " as yet remained unexplained 

 in the origin of species." 



And how much has remained unaccounted for, I would add, 

 in vicarious co-operative sacrifice calculated to support the 

 advance of life ! How strangely ungrateful it seems for Man, who 

 has derived immense advantages from the primordial operation 

 of unconscious sympathetic co-operation, impugning Nature as 

 wanting in sympathy and without morality as non-moral in fact. 



We saw that the very inception of the higher races of plants 

 and all that it implied, was directly led up to by Symbiosis. In 

 view of this fundamental fact alone it reads almost like mockery 

 to find Darwin surmising that in Nature variations useful to each 

 being's own welfare may be expected sometimes to occur par 

 hasard. For is not Nature able to produce by accident usefulness 

 to the creature (so ran the argument) if mere man though by 

 foresight is able to produce usefulness to himself, as witness the 

 case of Domestication ? 



Usefulness, however, is a relative and not an absolute term. 

 It cannot be stripped on or off after the fashion of mendelian 

 " characters." Before we can adequately deal with " usefulness " 

 we must know whether it is one that avails to life or towards 

 death. The emergence of viable and really useful variations 

 is not a matter of mere mathematical or kaleidoscopic proba- 

 bility , but is due to the usefulness of the organism's own 

 contributions to the general organic fund of life. Such bio- 

 economic usefulness purchases the wherewithal for a progressive 

 endowment of the germ substance. If the organism on the 

 other hand, indolently plays the losing, i.e., predaceous, game of 

 life, the proto- and germ-plasm become impoverished. 



