THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE SPECIES 167 



own. But the motion of our own body is something 

 felt or experienced intuitively, something absolute. 

 As we move, the universe, our universe rather that 

 is, all that we act upon, actually or in our contemplation 

 contracts in one direction and expands in another. 

 We feel ourselves to be apart from it although we may, 

 to some extent, control it. We have no doubt that 

 the higher animals have this feeling of isolation from, 

 and relation to, an universe which is something apart 

 from themselves ; though, of course, the attempt to 

 demonstrate this leads to all the kinds of difficulties 

 suggested in our attempt to discuss individuality. 

 It is a conviction so strongly felt that we have no 

 doubt about it. The organic individual we may then 

 describe as an isolated, autonomic constellation of 

 physico-chemical parts capable of indefinite growth 

 or reproduction. 1 



What is reproduction ? It is organic growth by 

 dissociation accompanied in the higher organisms by 

 differentiation and reintegration. To make this state- 

 ment clear, we must now consider the phenomena of 

 reproduction in the lower and higher organisms. 



We know purely physical growth. If a small 

 crystal of some suitable substance be suspended in an 

 indefinitely large quantity of a solution of the same 

 chemical substance it will begin to grow, and there is 

 no apparent limit to the mass which it may attain. 

 Such giant crystals may be grown in the laboratory 

 or they may be found in rock masses. Growth 

 here is a process of accretion in which a particular 

 form is maintained. Form in inorganic nature may 

 be essential or accidental. Accidental forms are such 



1 The description is, of course, only a convenient one. The notion of 

 individuality, as it is expressed in the earlier part of this paragraph, is an 

 intuitively felt, or subjective, one. It is best called personality. 



