THE BEGINNINGS OF DEPENDENT LIFE 



BY JOHN M. CLARKE 



For a number of 3^ears the writer has endeav^-^ed to assemble 

 material from the older faunas which might illuminate the incipient 

 expressions of dependent life. It is through this avenue only that 

 the problem of the origin of the symbiotic conditions which now 

 pervade all nature can ultimately be approached with hope of 

 resolution. 



The dependent condition of individual existence is one of the 

 manifold presentments of organic adaptation which is to be com- 

 prehended best by comparison of the complicated conditions 

 prevalent today with their simpler expressions in the early life of the 

 earth. Adaptation is in large measure a sociological problem of 

 immediate concern. It is not proper to consider the more serious 

 features of sociological adaptation as merely analogous to organic 

 adaptation. In human society dependence means simplicity, that 

 is, loss of complexity; it reduces moral independence and induces 

 idleness, beggary, misery and crime. Here is no question of 

 analogy, but rather of continuity of mode, of cause and effect, 

 penetrating human society. Such laws as govern its fundamental 

 and primary manifestations are to be sought in the primitive life of 

 the earth. 



i am fully aware of what extensive data are essential to adequate 

 conclusions in this inquiry and how far-reaching the bearings of the 

 inquiry must be. At this time I should go no further perhaps 

 than to point out some of the very numerous and most instructive 

 expressions of these conditions which it has been practicable to I riig 

 together, abiding in the hope of eventually collating more copious 

 data. I shall not go too far, however, in suggesting certain 

 obvious inferences which seem entirely justified by these data and 

 by the general principles of adaptation. 



Dependent life, whether expressed in the often extraordinarily 

 complicated conditions of parasitism, or in more simple symbiotic 

 manifestations such as commensalism or mutualism or still more 

 simply in the merely fixed condition of the individual through 

 the whole or a part of its life, involves conditions of degeneration. 

 These degenerative effects are relative; they may involve an indi- 

 vidual in most of its essential organs and functions, a genus, a 



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