EVOLUTIONAL PSYCHOLOGY 71 



can provide the necessary support and sanction. How, in the 

 absence of these, could the union resist the corroding influences 

 of temptations to less viable purposes, in fact of degeneration ? 

 Resistance to inferior psychological as to inferior physiological 

 influences is a most important matter, and in either case it is 

 connected, I maintain, with the degree of biological sanction 

 that a particular species deserves. It is not difficult to see, 

 that in mental, just as in more purely physiological evolution, 

 there is a perennial need of a steadying and directive principle, 

 operating with persistent reference to the maximal good of life, 

 such as I affirm Symbiogenesis to be. For the mind is proverb- 

 ially fickle and needs constant restraint and direction from many 

 sources. 



Let us take, as an example of " appeal," the case of the attrac- 

 tion exerted by seeds and fruits upon the " minds " of animals. 

 Here we have a case in point of an appeal to the attention with 

 an often recurring " living " interaction between mind and 

 object. Let no one say that I am selecting a case which lends 

 itself more particularly to special pleading. On due analysis, 

 it will be found that all important Psychogenesis resolves itself 

 into processes of a quasi-economic character. Psychological 

 like physiological " processes," involve effort, steady applica- 

 tion, and capitalisation of results under constant reliance upon 

 widely and permanently useful correlations and correspondences. 

 In other words, " acquisition " of mental, like that of physio- 

 logical or mercantile capital, is due to work, coupled with the 

 " live and let live " principle. As in the case of the fruit and 

 the attracted animal, the " object " lending itself to the appli- 

 cation of the mind, is generally one that has had in many ways 

 adequate preparation fitting it for reciprocal intercourse with 

 another being. 



Some of the simplest elements are now coming to be spoken 

 of as " biologically inclined," which is as an earnest of the 

 primordial and often hidden forms of mutuality on the existence 

 of which I insist. Quite recently a thesis has been propounded 

 by an American writer, Professor L. J. Henderson, in his The 

 Order of Nature to the effect that the properties of the three 

 elements Hydrogen, Oxygen and Carbon are somehow a 

 preparation for the evolutionary process. 



We may say that even the most difficult psychological " pro- 

 cesses " are merely complications superposed upon primitive 



