CHAPTER V

THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE SPECIES 162

Argument.--The concept of the organic individual is one which is arbitrary, and is convenient only for purposes of description. Life on the earth is integrally one. Personality is the intuition of the conscious organism that it is a centre of action, and that all the rest of the universe is relative to it. The individual organism, regarded objectively, is an isolated, autonomous constellation, capable of indefinite growth by dissociation, differentiation, and re-integration. This growth is reproduction. The dissociated part reproduces the form and manner of functioning of the individual organism from which it has proceeded. The offspring varies from the parent organism, but it resembles it much more than it varies from it. There are therefore categories of organisms in nature the individuals of which resemble each other more than they resemble the individuals belonging to other categories: these are the elementary species. Hypotheses of heredity are corpuscular ones, and are based on the physical analogy of molecules and atoms. The concept of the species is a logical one. The organism is a phase in an evolutionary or a developmental flux, and the idea of the species is attained by arresting this flux.