Chapter 2 

 Individuality and World 



In the preceding chapter we have followed in the animal series the 

 evolution of individuality in the psychical-social sense and we have seen 

 that it reaches its full expression only in man. This highest type of 

 individuality we shall now analyze still further. The term "individuality" 

 implies a distinction between the organism with its psychical attributes and 

 activities, the inner world, and the surrounding, non-living, as well as the 

 living and human social world, the outer world. It also suggests the concept 

 of the uniqueness of the individual and of his self-determination in his 

 relations with the environment, in contradistinction to the organism as a 

 mechanism or an automaton; self-determination carries with it, as a corollary, 

 responsibility for one's actions and attitudes. These concepts of individuality 

 have arisen in the course of the activities of daily life, in response to the 

 problems man has to face and the manifold difficulties he has to overcome. 

 For a fuller understanding of the development of the feeling of individuality 

 it will therefore be necessary to analyze the distinction between inner and 

 outer world. 



On the basis of our sense impressions and by means of abstraction and 

 synthesis, we have created a thought structure of the surrounding non-living 

 physical and chemical world, as well as of the surrounding living world of 

 organisms, and in both worlds the same constituents occur. The environ- 

 mental factors act on our senses as stimuli and may appear to us partly as 

 variable and partly as constant factors, while we assume that our sense 

 organs are constant, although they also in reality may be variable. After we 

 have dissociated from ourselves the outer non-living and living world which, 

 by means of critical analysis, we have transformed or attempted to transform 

 into constant and variable physical-chemical units, we consider further the 

 interactions of the outer world with our sense organs, nervous system and 

 other constituent parts of our body. In this analysis we may tentatively 

 regard the elements of which the outer world is composed as more or less 

 constant and our body and its constituents as variable. Through the study of 

 the variability of our organism in its interaction with the environment, we 

 create the science of physiology. As a result of this interaction between the 

 outer world and our own organism, there develop on the basis of our sense 

 impressions thoughts and emotions, which on their part may then interact 

 with our nervous mechanisms, with our muscles and our bodily functions. 

 There is thus a circuit from the outer world by way of sense impressions 

 and our organ systems to thoughts and emotions, and from these, in the 

 reverse way, to the outer world. This circuit we study by means of abstrac- 

 tions that are shifted and re-synthesized in such a manner. that the essential 

 constants are separated from variable, accidental factors; such an analysis, 



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