ioo SYMBIOSIS 



either too hopelessly susceptible to haphazard interferences 

 or else too hopelessly insignificant by comparison with the 

 will of the Infinite. Fatalism on these scores, however, is no 

 more justified than are the nightmares, or " night-views," as 

 Fechner would say, anent the inevitableness of the " struggle 

 for existence." 



It was seen in previous chapters in the case of scientific 

 agriculture, how it becomes increasingly our business in life- 

 and one in which we have every reason to anticipate a fair share 

 of success to encourage Symbiosis at the expense of its 

 opposite : Parasitism. It is what we are required to do in the 

 interest of our bodily, mental and social health : to encourage 

 Symbiosis rather than Parasitism. 



In the case of agriculture we are dealing with vast popula- 

 tions of the soil who are sufficiently inter-dependent with us to 

 allow them to be considered " part of us." Their welfare is as 

 important to us as ours is to them. Here too we have a mutual 

 responsibility, and from this case it is perhaps more generally 

 to be concluded that it is man's true office in the economy of 

 Nature to be in sympathy and in symbiotic league with all 

 " good " beings. As Seneca taught : Ubicumque homo est, ibi 

 beneficii locus est. 



Butler's treatment, then, of " Our subordinate personal- 

 ities " requires some essential bio-economic addenda in order 

 to be adequate and complete, and the same must be said regard- 

 ing his consideration, from his special mnemic point of view, 

 of the " Assimilation of outside matter," on which subject he 

 nevertheless expresses himself with considerable confidence. 

 He states that 



As long as any living organism can maintain itself in a position to 

 which it has been accustomed more or less nearly both in its own life 

 and in those of its forefathers, nothing can harm it. As long as the 

 organism is familiar with the position (he goft on to say) and remembers 

 its antecedents, nothing can assimilate it. It must be first dislodged 

 from the position with which it is familiar, as being able to remember 

 it, before mischief can happen to it. Nothing can assimilate living organ- 

 ism. On the other hand, the moment living organism loses sight of its 

 own position and antecedents, it is liable to immediate assimilation, and 

 to be thus familiarised with the position and antecedents of some other 

 creature. 



This can only mean that a species which has strenuously made 

 a place for itself in the world of life and continues with tolerable 



