314 SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY OF THE ORGANISM 



6. CERTAIN DIFFICULTIES IN THE CATEGORICAL CONCEPT 



OF INDIVIDUALITY 



Well-known difficulties crop up in the ontological 

 concept of causality. Of course, it cannot be our task here 

 to mention them all, and so it may be enough to remind you 

 of such problems as the actio in distans, the " seat " of a 

 force, the time between cause and effect, the boundaries 

 between two bodies in pushing, and so on. The infinitesimal 

 calculus was invented in order to overcome these difficulties, 

 which to a great extent are difficulties of space-analysis ; 

 for causality always relates to changes in space exclusively ; 

 both cause and effect are spatial changes. 



We therefore must not be astonished, it seems to me, if 

 now, whilst entering upon the scientific refining of the 

 category of individuality, we meet with quite a number of 

 difficulties at once, though almost all of them are quite 

 different from those which appear in the analysis of 

 causality. 



An Analogy to a Mere Functional Conception of Causality 



If we were satisfied with a mere functional conception 

 of nature as certain modern authors pretend to be that 

 is, with a conception of nature which simply states on what 

 elemental natural factors any being or happening univocally 

 depends, without distinguishing different kinds and degrees 

 of necessary dependence, the difficulties we should meet 

 would not be very numerous. We then might simply 

 reason as follows : 



The whole process by which individuality manifests 

 itself may be called the process of individualisation. We 



