LIFE AND HABIT 103 



and useful status, and that this frailty of life must be taken 

 into account, can hardly be denied. Nor is the " dislodgment " 

 of an organism in Nature performed by any special artifice such 

 as we might employ in the laboratory say by cutting a parti- 

 cular nerve or by using a particular sleeping-draught. We 

 know, moreover, that some organisms are more resistant than 

 others as regards temptations. Man, for instance, cannot tempt 

 wild animals at will into increased fertility, as recorded by Seton 

 Thompson in the case of the blue foxes of Alaska, which are so 

 strictly monogamous as to make it extremely hard to get a 

 widowed fox to mate. The blue fox is evidently not inclined 

 to be " dislogded " from sober " antecedents." It is also well- 

 known that many plants and animals will not reprcduce in 

 domestication, even though individually vigorous ; whilst others, 

 though weak and sickly, breed freely. There remains to be 

 written, therefore, a big chapter of Natural Philosophy anent the 

 " nature of the organism," i.e., concerning biological character. 



Butler supposes that when a cross is too wide so that sterility 

 or sterility of hybrids so produced ensues, this is due to the fact 

 that the offspring would be " pulled hither and thither by the 

 conflicting memories or advices " distracted by the internal 

 tumult of conflicting memories. 



There is (he says) a fault in the chain of associated ideas. I think 

 (he continues) we may also expect that no other force, save that of associa- 

 tion, should have power to kindle, so to speak, into the flame of action 

 the atomic spark of memory, which we can alone suppose to be transmitted 

 from one generation to another. 



My comment is that before a cross can be of any real avail, 

 a number of definite physiological and biological requirements 

 has to be fulfilled. These requirements are mainly of the 

 symbiotic order and, ipso jacto, preclude a promiscuous mixing 

 of conflicting memories. Before any association, physical or 

 mental, can be fruitful in a real sense, can take root and status 

 as a new form, there must exist above all the conditions for a 

 continuance of biological service. "Conflicts," "tumults," 

 " distractions," and " faults of associated ideas " must arise 

 where there is a lack of reciprocal differentation, where associa- 

 tion unsanctioned by Nature makes inter alia for reproductive 

 weakness, an instance of which we saw in the case of the Crab 

 infested by Sacculina. Such weakness is really equivalent to 

 disease, testifying to the lack of viability on the part of 



