10 ORGANIC DEPENDENCE AND DISEASE 



turity an independent life, whatever may happen to it in 

 the period of its waning. 



At the risk of stating our conclusions before we have 

 fully marshalled the evidence, deductively, then, normal liv- 

 ing is, in terms of biology, correct living, that is to say, 

 righteous living, and in so far as dependence invades the 

 mode of life whether in organ or individual, such living is 

 unrighteous, disordered and diseased ; in better phrase, bio- 

 logically, is without hope, for such perturbation or disease 

 is beyond voluntary or casual rectification. These ideas 

 apply not to the individual only but to the species, the race, 

 the stock, even to the broadest divisions of life, the sub- 

 kingdoms themselves. 



In speaking thus of dependent life as an expression of 

 perturbation of function, it is easy to fall into misappre- 

 hension, for in writing on the subject of parasitism the 

 mind of the reader is likely to turn involuntarily to the 

 overwhelming invasion of all the earth by protozoan and 

 protophytic parasites, parents of ''germ diseases" and in- 

 festations, sponsors for the deadly assaults upon humanity 

 whose victims count up more than all other causes of death 

 combined. We shall presently endeavor to indicate the ele- 

 mental and historical differences between such unicellular 

 parasitism and metazoan parasitism; the latter involving 

 the mutual somatic relations of multicellular differentiated 

 and well-defined animals or plants. The present statements 

 are made with special reference to metazoan dependence. 



THE MEANING OF ABNORMAL LIVING 



From the world about us volumes have been filled with 

 examples of these departures from the normal mode of liv- 

 ing. It is safe to say that a vast majority of all life of the 

 world is permeated by this loss of original excellence, which 

 is, in more explicit terms, a condition of dependence and 

 degeneration. We can not get a more impressive conception 

 of its effect throughout all nature than in its elemental ex- 



