THE SPECIES ■ 237 



tinuous, but would produce the impression of being two 

 species. It is the questionable merit of Darwinism to have 

 followed out this idea to an extreme, with the result that 

 all gaps within species are filled in with products of the 

 imagination. Darwinism could not really shake the fact of 

 the existence of species quite distinct from one another ; 

 so it contented itself with ignoring the differences, on prin- 

 ciple. 



Things being so, there is no putting an end to the dispute 

 as to whether the species is purely a means for classification 

 necessary for the systematising of the vast number of animal 

 forms, or whether it is the result of a systematising force of 

 Nature. 



But there is no agreement even in the methods employed 

 in defining species, quite apart of their position vis-^-vis of 

 Nature. All naturalists highly gifted with intuition, and of 

 these Goethe was the supreme instance, start from one single 

 instance or " typical case," group similar animals into a species 

 around it, and determine the various deviations with refer- 

 ence thereto. For such men the species embraces all the 

 deviations that branch off from the type of the animal selected. 



For less " intuitive " naturalists, the species forms merely 

 a group of similar individuals united by a certain rule. 



In both cases it is open to doubt whether the rule by 

 means of which the species is held together is merely a con- 

 ceptual rule, or whether we see in it., the expression of a natural 

 factor. 



To the question " Is the species a natural factor ? ", 

 Darwinism, with the naive confidence so characteristic of 

 the whole spirit of that time, unhesitatingly replied in the 

 affirmative. Since Darwinism was extraordinarily little 

 gifted with intuition, it saw in the species merely a mixture 

 of properties, such as one might find in any mass of fermenting 

 matter. The species^ like the individual, must be reduced to 



