i] IDEA OF INDIVIDUALITY 13 



action, and so of independence, is clearly dependent 

 upon a visible and obvious heterogeneity of structure. 

 It might appear self-evident that the organs, the 

 animal's living tools, should have a different structure 

 according to the functions they were meant to carry 

 out, were it not that in man we have the example 

 prominently before our eyes of an enormous number 

 of very special functions being executed by a single 

 organ such as the hand. This apparent exception is 

 due to the structure of his brain, which has given 

 him reason and educability for instinct and automa- 

 tism. True, he has to be at the trouble of exercising 

 his wits, but gains vast potentialities thereby; the 

 brutes have no toils of learning, but their smooth 

 actions are sadly limited. He has learned to make 

 tools from inorganic materials, and they serve as the 

 heterogeneous structures by means of which he can 

 perform all his diverse actions. For specialised 

 functions there must always exist specialised struc- 

 tures; but man through his conscious reason has 

 been able to put off the burden of them from his own 

 substance on to the broader shoulders of inorganic 

 nature. There does exist some corresponding hetero- 

 geneity in himself, but not in visible structure : it lies 

 in the diversity of his states of consciousness. 



These cannot all exist as such at one time 1 , but by 



1 For a case of heterogeneous physical structures which cannot exist 

 simultaneously, see pp. 110, 113. There the structures must alternate 



