306 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



which depends on the environmental ensemble : so that the two categories, no 

 longer mutually exclusive, find places beside each other as diverse manifestations 

 of one natural Individuality ; for vitalists and mechanists are no more opposed to 

 each other in reality than are the constructors of a tunnel because they bore from 

 opposite ends ; — their respective conceptions are not contradictory, but rather 

 complementary. Our ignorance of organisms, however, is still so great that it is 

 impossible to prove this community of character until we pass beyond Vitality 

 itself, and that in two directions — both above and below the realm of Life 1 ; — above, 

 to social change, and below to certain chemical and physical systems properly 

 so called. 



(3) The most distinctive and the least understood life processes are those of 

 development ; and, like organisms, nations too have their embryonic stages ; and 

 History traces (as a concrete instance) the British Empire to its origin in the 

 simpler early English community. But this " simplicity " must not be taken to 

 mean that early England was merely the miniature Empire waiting to be enlarged 

 like a photograph, or expanded like a bubble. Its "simplicity" was really a vast 

 potentiality, such that in response to world changes it inevitably became the 

 Empire ; but no historian ever dreams of attributing national development to any 

 entelechy, or explaining it by metaphysics ; rather the personal and social factors 

 actually operative at each stage are regarded as all-sufficient to account for sub- 

 sequent changes 2 — a standpoint in marked contrast to that of many biologists. 

 Now it is merely the generalisation of this historical mode of procedure that 

 constitutes the Principle of Individuality, which maintains (a) that every instance 

 of such true development, 3 in any of its forms — national, personal, vital, or 

 physical — finds its complete causal explanation in the nature itself of the developing 

 individual concerned as responsive to its total environment, and never in any 

 entity beyond or beneath this ; and (b) that the particular form of this develop- 

 ment — its course, duration, and other special characteristics — is always a function 

 of the individual's original undifferentiated complexity, 4 and of nothing else. In 

 this connection the term "individual" has a meaning which, though certainly 

 wide, is still very closely allied to ordinary usage ; for it means merely any 

 indivisible natural system whatever, — any system, i.e., which would in its essentials 

 be destroyed as such by division 5 ; e.g. the electronic atom, family, nation, 

 organism. The individual, further (thus understood), can never exist in total 

 isolation, but only in relation with its environment — i.e. with other "individuals" ; 

 since every natural entity is in this sense an "individual" — a system, i.e., of some 

 kind — never formless, never peifectly simple, and never isolated. 



(4) Every such system or individual, then, has always some degree of com- 

 plexity ; and we must now trace the logical implications of the varying degrees 



1 As remarked at the outset, the failure to do this constitutes one main defect 

 of recent controversy. 



2 This is the historic Ideal — I do not mean that it can ever be actually 

 realised — as distinct from that of the philosophic or religious thinker. 



3 By "true development," not to prejudge the issue, I mean where actual 

 continuity or identity can be traced or presumed in spite of no matter how great a 

 change of character ; and in organisms this is unquestioned. 



4 This expression, and its " function," are best understood as being analogous 

 to any unexpanded mathematical term — e.g. {a + x) n = . . . 



5 " Individual" means (literally) indivisible; and the ordinary individual 

 person is obviously an indivisible system ; of course not all divisions are fatal, 

 some being reproductive. On the relation between Individuality and Natural 

 Law I may refer to Dr. Bosanquet's Principle of Individuality, Lecture III, 



