THE ORIGIN OF MORALITY 55 



and that the cross-feeding animal does not need to destroy its 

 food-plants, from which it requires parts only such as can be 

 spared for the purposes of mutually profitable exchange. 



Prof. Shimer takes the usual line of quoting poetry in support 

 of his propositions, as though to range the " gospel of war and 

 damnation " by the side of the Muses. But there is a profound 

 moral chasm there, which no poetry in the world can be found 

 to span, but which on the contrary all great poetry has always 

 deeply bewailed. There is an abyss there which suggests the 

 offering of incense at the altars of Nemesis rather than those of 

 the Muses Nemesis worship for accumulated biological wrong, 

 which wrong will infallibly sooner or later result in direful events, 

 if not in great catastrophes to the respective species or genera. 

 No poetry can assuage the quakings of the human heart in the 

 committal of wrongs that are " abhorred by Nature." The fact 

 that the unperverted human conscience shrinks in the face of 

 such wrongs, is proof in itself of the strength of the bio-moral 

 sense and of the categorial imperative of duty which it involves. 



Strangely, and inconsistently. Prof. Shimer, who thus defends 

 the predatory life in one of its phases, yet declares that 



Parasites are not now, nor ever were in the distant past in evolving 

 lines. Parasites (he says) whether plant, beast or human are degenerate ; 

 the individuals become weaker and weaker and finally the life ends in death. 



Are we to understand that only excessive depredation causes 

 such a decline ? Must we not condemn the principle altogether, 

 seeing more particularly that the story of an inherent and 

 universal compulsoriness of depredation is a pure myth ? 



If the strength of a parasite is eventually and irrevocably 

 broken and if such a creature becomes malignant during the 

 process, is this not due to the fact that the principle involved, 

 namely, depredation, does not avail towards life ? 



The best answer is one which refers to the facts. And this 

 brings us back to the subject of the physiological basis of morality. 

 The physiological problem, here, as so often elsewhere, resolves 

 itself into an economic problem. The study of Bio-Economics 

 shows and further important evidence will presently be adduced 

 to confirm it that honest work and genuine improvement of 

 organisation are not compatible with rich and over-abundant 

 food and what this implies in more or less predaceous relations. 

 The direful effects of an almost absolute dependence on such 

 food are of course more particularly evidenced by the whole case 



