I40 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION chap. 



them. Thus with regard to the character and category of 

 individuality it is only necessary to point out here that in- 

 dividuality is distinctive of wholes. Wholes are not arbi- 

 trarily divisible and the divided parts are not arbitrarily 

 interchangeable. Every whole has a real character, a 

 unique identity and an irreversible orientation which dis- 

 tinguishes it from everything else and is the very essence 

 of wholeness. And this character of individuality rises 

 with the rise of wholes in the scale of Evolution, and 

 acquires decisive importance at the ultimate level of human 

 Personality. Purposiveness, again, is a special form of that 

 unified organic action which has already been discussed. 

 It means a correlation and unification of actions towards 

 an end, whether this is consciously conceived or appre- 

 hended or not. On the animal plane and especially on the 

 psychical level of Evolution it is quite distinctive of wholes. 

 In an exhaustive treatment of holistic characters and cate- 

 gories individuality and purposiveness would have no less 

 important a place than those above discussed. 



Let us now pass on to consider organism as a centre of 

 internal regulation, adjustment and co-ordination of its own 

 functions and activities. The phenomena that meet us 

 here are indeed most wonderful. No cunningly devised 

 machine of human contrivance can rival or even approach 

 in delicacy of co-ordination or fineness as well as complexity 

 of adjustment the organic wholes we see in Nature. Pro- 

 fessor Haldane has described the wonderful combination of 

 processes which go to make up the physiology of breathing ^ 

 — a combination which is marvellous enough under normal 

 I conditions, but which becomes far more so when we see how 

 curiously breathing adjusts itself to abnormal conditions, to 

 situations artificially brought about, which it has probably 

 never had to face in all time. No "experience" or hered- 

 itary "memory" can guide it here; and yet it rises to the 

 occasion every time, within a wonderfully wide range of 

 adaptability and plasticity. Practically every major physio- 

 logical function shows the same power of co-ordination of 



* Organism and Environment, 191 7. 



