246 THEORETICAL BIOLOGY 



quite impossible so long as we were merely considering the 

 individuals separately. 



The framework and the inter-adjustments of the individual 

 organism are in themselves so manifold that it is impossible 

 to take them in at a glance. The species is a thousand times 

 richer than the individual, and consequently impossible to 

 grasp in its entirety, if we consider it merely as the sum of 

 its members. We can arrive at an intelligent notion of the 

 truth only by grasping the species as a unity and confining 

 ourselves to the ultimate inter-connections that bind it into 

 a whole. Then every species appears to us as an ingenious 

 structure formed by Nature, the several parts of which, as 

 they separate from one another, are perpetually reunited 

 and renewed by the sexual process and the inter-adjustment 

 of the sexual organs. 



RACE — PEOPLE — FAMILY 



The large species readily faU into groups, which are 

 arranged around a typical sample animal. 



Among these sample animals, one can always be found 

 that serves as such for the whole group. 

 1 Such groups, which usually display a marked tendency to 



avoid mixing with one another, are called races. We see in 

 them the starting-point for the formation of new species. 



Races are divisible into peoples, held together, as a rule, 

 ^ by geographical circumstances, which afford them special 



conditions essential for their life. 



The ultimate member of the species is the family. Races 

 and peoples may be described as subdivisions of the species, 

 but the family is the true building-stone of this elusive natural 

 unit. In the family occurs the mixing of the genes that 

 makes of the species something other than the mere renewer 

 of the same individual. 



The family forms the visible expression of the species ; 



