20 ANIMAL INDIVIDUALITY [CH. 



of reproduction, raises up new individuals of the 

 same sort out of his substance, and abandons him to 

 his fate ; but the race goes on 1 . 



Our first definition of the individual based on the 

 idea of continuance can now be amended. We must 

 not say that the individual is a whole whose parts 

 work together in such a way as to ensure that this 

 whole, and its working, shall persist ; the individual 

 only persists for a limited time. In spite of this, 

 something does indefinitely continue, though it is but 

 the kind, the species, and not the single individual 

 itself. There is only one kind of working in the 

 species, and this repeats itself in a recurrent cycle ; 

 but for each cycle as it recurs a new individual is 

 required as the instrument of the working 2 . 



1 It is to be noted that no actual impossibility stands in the way 

 of the individual's continuance, but only great practical difficulties. 

 Bergson somewhere makes the illuminating remark that the whole of 

 Evolution might have realized itself in a single individual. This, 

 with our knowledge of the potential immortality of many kinds of 

 functioning protoplasm (see Metschnikoff on the age of trees, their 

 propagation by cuttings, etc.) on the one hand, and of the facts of 

 embryology, more especially the striking changes that take place at 

 metamorphosis, on the other, we shall not readily be prepared to 

 deny ; but Life, gifted with reproductive powers, has found it come 

 cheaper and easier to choose Death for each single individual and 

 think rather of the persistence of the race than to expend over- 

 increasing energy on patching up the defects that are bound to 

 appear in the individual with age. (See Cornliill, 1911, loc. cit.) 



2 It would be more accurate to say at least one individual : often 

 two or more distinct and unlike individuals are employed in each 

 cycle of working ; see p. 23. 



