63
BIOLOGY AND HUMAN SOCIETY.
(Being a Presidential Address delivered to the Club at the
Annual Meeting on April 1st, 1933.)
By Sir DAVID PRAIN, C.M.G., C.I.E., F.R.S.
WHEN examining last session the nature of the relationship
between Botanical Study and Historical Investigation
we observed that an eminent Professor of Physiology had
recently said that "to the Biologist Human Society appears
"not merely as an association of men, but, in its developed
"stage, as a symbiosis of Man with certain animals and plants."
This biological reflection is a reminder that a technical symbiosis,
or balanced association of organisms whose mutual give and
take brings equal advantage to each, is after all only a special
manifestation of the general rule that most organisms benefit
by their association with others, and that many live at their
neighbours' expense.
If Human Society be a symbiosis with certain animals and
plants the Association is rarely biologically balanced. Anthro-
pology and Archaeology alike indicate that, in its less developed
stages, Human Society has often consisted of associations of
men struggling for existence with certain animals, among them
Man himself, and fighting meanwhile against encroaching
vegetation. Biology learns from experience and history that
Man considers himself the lord of Creation: that claim,
whether valid or not, is also an admission that the give and
take between Human Society and animals and plants is meant
to bring more advantage to Man than to them. Man divides
animals and plants into two economic groups—the useful and
the useless, reserving the right to transfer any animal or plant at
need from one group to the other. Human Society goes further
and divides useless animals and plants into two classes; the
negligible, which may be left alone so long as they do not interfere
with Human Society; and the noxious, which must be destroyed
as vermin, or eradicated as weeds. Useful animals and plants
are subdivided into three classes; those that may be exploited
on behalf of Human Society; those that may be enslaved to
serve Human Society; and those with which Man may establish
a symbiosis enabling them to occupy a subordinate position in
Human Society.