INDIVIDUALITY AND WORLD 647 



attributes, beliefs and principles, occupations and professions, family asso- 

 ciations, or other personal relationships such as friendships and feuds. It is 

 essentially as members of such groups that we enter into communication with 

 individuals ; we possess the group-suggestions and we may be subject to 

 acutely acting ones, such as those manifest, for instance, in the mob spirit, 

 and individuals are largely, to us, therefore, representatives of groups, sym- 

 bols of various activities, tendencies, principles or associations of human 

 beings. Yet within these groups individuals are distinguished by the possession 

 of special group characteristics. Each individual is a composite as a member of 

 many groups and these groupings are not the same in different individuals. But 

 in addition, we recognize various distinctive signs of individuals, such as 

 structural characteristics, movements, ways of speaking, expressions of 

 various thoughts and emotions and special attitudes which distinguish one 

 individual from another and which are partly independent of groups. 



However it is, after all, only a small part of the individuality of others 

 and of himself which each person learns to know. The meaning of individual- 

 ity, therefore, is based largely on the subjective experiences of the individual 

 himself, and the knowledge thus derived is imperfect and faulty. The recogni- 

 tion of the distinctive features of the individual and of the meaning of in- 

 dividuality are problems with which the 1 study of the body and mind is 

 concerned. Science provides instruments for the analysis of the physical 

 and psychical mosaic of which the individual is composed and makes possible 

 the investigation of genetic and environmental factors entering into his con- 

 stitution. But science in carrying out this analysis splits individuality into 

 many constituent parts, which then are joined together again into new groups 

 or types more significant than the conventional ones which a more superficial 

 observation furnishes. Science thus shows that what is most significant in 

 individuals as separate entities is not the elements of which the individual 

 consists, but the mode and the quantitative manner in which these elements 

 are joined together, and in this sense it deprives to some extent individuality 

 of its distinctiveness and uniqueness and it diminishes in man what has been 

 considered as the most characteristic feature of his individuality. 



As we have pointed out earlier in this chapter there is a far going differ- 

 ence between the psychical-social and the physical-physiological individuality. 

 In contrast to the physiological and physical individuality which is distinct 

 and sharply separated from the surrounding world, the psychical individuality 

 forms in certain respects one connected whole with its environment. The 

 evidence given in our preceding discussion has shown that in the psychical 

 sphere the individual is not sharply separated from the non living things 

 and other organisms. The psychical individuality is composed of elements 

 which are interwoven in such an intricate way with the world surrounding 

 the individual that it is difficult to make a sharp distinction between those 

 elements which belong to the one and to the other. Moreover the intricacy of 

 these connections increases the difficulty of establishing in the actions of the 

 individual the relations of cause and effect. If we consider the fact that the 

 psychical-social individuality depends largely on the nervous system for its 



