CONTENTS xiii 



CHAPTER V 



PAGE 



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 indi- 

 vidual organism from which it has proceeded. The offspring varies 

 fi$om 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. 



CHAPTER VI 



TRANSFORMISM . 208 



Argument. A reasoned classification of organisms suggests that 

 a process of evolution has taken place. It suggests logical relation- 

 ships between organisms, while the results of embryology and 

 palaeontology suggest chronological relationships. Yet this kin- 

 ship of organisms might only be a logical, and not a material 

 one. Evolution may have occurred somewhere, but it might be 

 argued that the ideas of species have generated each other in a 

 Creative Thought. But transformism may be produced experi- 

 mentally, and so science has adopted a mechanistic hypothesis of 

 the nature of the process. Transformism of species depends on 

 the occurrence of variations, but these arise spontaneously and 

 independently of each other, and they must be co-ordinated. 

 This co-ordination of variations cannot be the work of the environ- 

 ment. Variations are cumulative, and they exhibit direction, and 

 this direction is either an accidental one, or it is the expression of 

 an impetus or directing agency in the varying organism itself. 

 The problem of the cause of variation is only a pseudo-problem. 



