48 ANIMAL INDIVIDUALITY [CH. 



By now, all faith in man as a guide to individuality 

 must have been shattered. In man, an individuality 

 presents itself as something definite and separate from 

 all others, something which animates a particular 

 mass of matter and is inflexibly associated with it, 

 appearing when it appears and vanishing only when 

 it dies. That idea of individuality is not universally 

 applicable. 



In perplexing procession before us there have 

 appeared individualities inhabiting single cells, others 

 inhabiting single cells at the start, many cells (and 

 each of these with some kind of separate inhabitant 

 of its own) in later life : individualities whose fleshly 

 mansions are continuous one with another, no boun- 

 daries between: individualities that appear and 

 disappear along an undying stream of substance, 

 the substance moulding itself to each as the water of 

 a stream is moulded in turn to each hollow of its bed : 

 within one individuality others infinite in number, 

 lying hid under the magic cloak of potentiality, but 

 each ready to spring out as if from nowhere should 

 occasion offer. 



Nothing remains but to abandon preconceived 

 ideas. We must seek to interpret human individuality 

 not as the one true pattern to which all others 

 must conform, but as something with a history and 

 intelligible only through that history. We must 

 therefore make for the first beginnings of things and 



