646 THE BIOLOGICAL BASIS OF INDIVIDUALITY 



the idea of which means something to us although we are no longer here to 

 experience it, to benefit by it. Our children shall live in our spirit and con- 

 tinue in our ways and lead our efforts to fruition. But even in the face of 

 death men also keep up their petty ambitions and competitive self assertion. 

 The individual has lived and may still continue to live in a thought-world, 

 which does not take heed of his waning powers nor of the mortal disease which 

 may affect him ; these changes often do not tend to enter as real constituents 

 into the construction of his mind. His thought-world may remain fixed and 

 he does not foresee an end to it. 



4. Self-justification of our individuality. The individual lives in a struggle 

 with nature and with his social world ; in this struggle he receives injuries and 

 inflicts injuries. In others, he sees himself and the injury of others he feels 

 as his own injury. There exist laws which are disregarded by him and he 

 acts contrary to them ; he suffers from the pangs of conscience and fears 

 the consequences of what he does. In such a conflict he needs approval of 

 his actions and his individuality, he needs justification for his existence, 

 absolution for his failures and for his infringements of those laws which are 

 believed to be absolute. And yet, in determining his responsibility, he often 

 attributes to himself what originated in others, and to his environment he 

 attributes what was his own ; even here he is unable to discern the real from 

 the unreal and, insofar, he again lives in a world of illusions. 



However, all these psychical reactions in human beings which have here been 

 discussed and which tend to express and safeguard their individuality, are not 

 elementary psychical phenomena, but are conditioned by the social setting in 

 which they occur, by the social traditions, customs, and ethical standards which 

 direct and control the life of the social groups, large or small, to which the 

 individuals belong. The psychical individuality as we have just described it, 

 exists therefore only in an advanced stage of human social development, where 

 the sets of active suggestions are wider, more numerous and more varied than 

 in the more primitive societies, but where they are also less firmly fixed, more 

 accessible to influences which may change them, where the manifestations 

 of the social struggle are more complex and may affect also the thought-life 

 and emotions of the individual to a higher degree, and above all, where a 

 social reservoir of scientific and philosophical thought is available, which 

 may serve as a source of inner psychical goods to which the individual has 

 access. There has thus taken place an evolution also of the psychical-social 

 individuality; but it is the task of the history of civilization to trace this 

 evolution. 



Individuals are the units which constitute groups. Groups of various kinds 

 are aggregations of individuals in which the distinctive characters of com- 

 ponent parts are disregarded and characteristics common to all are used to 

 distinguish one group from all the other groups. In a certain sense, the group 

 concepts are thus opposed to and destructive of the features which constitute 

 the individual. The group concepts as far as they concern man are abstractions. 

 This applies to all groups, whether nations, races, economic classes, social 

 castes, or societies of various kinds ; also, whether they are based on moral 



