THE EVOLUTION OF INDIVIDUALITY 653 



in the form of words and are transmitted from generation to generation. 

 They are used as suggestions and give origin to conditioned thought reflexes, 

 which are associated with a certain environment. This system of thought 

 reflexes, with the accompanying emotions and the psychical-social environ- 

 ment, forms then, one whole; it carries injuries and pain. From this reservoir 

 in general, we receive our instruments in the social struggle ; we may leave 

 unchanged what we have taken and give it back again with all its inherent 

 imperfections ; or we may add new imperfections by using concepts faultily 

 in the social struggle. Only gradually and very slowly is a modification of 

 the thought-reservoir accomplished through the psychical reactions of in- 

 dividuals who suffer, and these may find expression in the work of poets, 

 philosophers and scientists; also through the play of mind which leads to 

 the creation of new ideas. 



However, the social thought-reservoir acquires an additional significance 

 for us. In seeking for something to take the place of the absolute, yet some- 

 thing to which we may fix our aims and motives and which provides more than 

 a satisfaction of our passing needs, something which is lasting and independ- 

 ent of the changing and ephemeral in us and in things around us, we turn 

 to this thought-reservoir in our search for a constant in the universe and in 

 man; we attempt to convert it into a trustworthy source of our valuations 

 and principles and, therefore, also of our inner psychical goods. To build 

 it up, make it consistent, to extend it, so that it becomes more and more 

 universal in the course of time, we conceive as our highest task. In these 

 efforts there begins to develop, step by step, a common, general reservoir for 

 all humanity, instead of the many particularistic group reservoirs which had 

 originally existed. 



Our psychical-social individuality, representing combinations of thoughts, 

 wishes and wills, accompanied by emotions and functioning within the frame- 

 work of the body — the elementary organ systems — with the aid of the 

 nervous system and of the system of hormones, represents thus something 

 intermediate between our bodily organism and the social thought-reservoir. 

 It takes its origin in the body and reaches out into this reservoir, which is 

 common to all but with which we each have our individualized contacts. 

 Within this reservoir is that which is relatively constant, but constant only 

 as compared with the fleeting existence of the individual. The individual 

 varies and disintegrates, but our social thought-reservoir appears lasting, the 

 depository of fixed values. Here is what remains of the individual, what he 

 took from it and what he added to it. The psychical-social individual to a 

 large extent consists of things borrowed from this reservoir, and to it, in the 

 pain of the natural and social struggle, he joins his fortunes. Here he deposits 

 his discoveries, thoughts and principles, to which, if possible, he adds his 

 individual name, so that in the reservoir he may live when his physical self 

 has died ; at the same time in so doing he eliminates his individuality as much 

 as he can from the social struggle and disappears in the impersonal, the 

 unselfish, in the realm of lasting principles where all individual pain and 

 individual desires end. 



Thus a fourth and shorter circuit has developed as the latest phase in the 



