EXTENSIONS 379 



this most important gap in our understanding of organisms. 

 Proceeding from the Stetitor studies we may suggest that one 

 characteristic of the cortical pattern is that it is beyond indivi- 

 duahty but bears intrinsically the tendency or capacity to integrate 

 as one or more than one individuality. In terms of a model, the 

 pattern might therefore be conceived as a network which is a type 

 of repeat pattern, somehow capable of deriving a wholeness while 

 maintaining its repeat character and potentialities beyond indivi- 

 duality. Thus fragments of a stentor or an egg when physically 

 isolated can themselves become wholes, so that the original 

 individuality is seen to have contained multiple nascent indivi- 

 dualities. When a stentor or cell normally divides the original 

 integrated pattern is obviously converted into two. Conversely, two 

 or more whole eggs or stentors can be fused together to produce 

 only a single individuahty from the several original ones. There- 

 fore, whatever is operating and determinant in these experimental 

 situations is something which is beyond individuality but tends 

 to individuate. It is this characteristic which has made pattern 

 unmechanical and so difficult to pin down, even in the case of 

 mosaic eggs; for in experiments the pattern reintegrates after 

 disturbances and deletions so that there is no point to point 

 correspondence on which to base analysis until the work of deter- 

 mination has already been accomplished. If the pattern factor is 

 beyond individuality, an important consequence is that wholeness 

 is not, as many have maintained, an irreducible, axiomatic presup- 

 position about any organism but rather a result or an achievement, 

 as McDougall (1938) has well stated. At the moment when a 

 fragment of an egg or a ciliate is cut there is no wholeness except 

 in the sense of an object which has been physically isolated, nor is 

 there a wholeness at the moment when two organisms are fused. 

 Instead, there are molecules, replicating units, and above all a 

 pattern factor which is beyond individuality through which a 

 wholeness is later achieved. In learning how this may come about, 

 Stentor may be an invaluable guide. Though Stentor is a single cell 

 and can presumably teach us nothing x)f the complex intercellular 

 relations which form the multicellular organism, it may well be 

 that comprehending the organization of a unicellular animal is a 

 fruitful if not essential step towards evolving a satisfactory theory 

 of more complex developments. 



