NATURAL SELECTION, ETC. 125 



may be separation of the offshoots, or indifference in 

 this respect, or continued and organic union with the 

 parent stock ; and this either with essential indepen- 

 dence of the offshoots, or with a subordination of these 

 to a common whole ; or finally with such subordination 

 and amalgamation, along with specialization of func- 

 tion, that the same parts, which in other cases can be 

 regarded only as progeny, in these become only mem- 

 bers of an individual. 



This leads to the question of individuality, a sub- 

 ject quite too large and too recondite for present dis- 

 cussion. The conclusion of the whole matter, how- 

 ever, is, that individuality — that very ground of "being 

 as distinguished from thing — is not attained in Nature 

 at one leap. If anywhere truly exemplified in plants, 

 it is only in the lowest and simplest, where the being 

 is a structural unit, a single cell, memberless and or- 

 ganless, though organic — the same thing as those cells 

 of which all the more complex plants are built up, and 

 with which every plant and (structurally) every animal 

 began its development. In the ascending gradation 

 of the vegetable kingdom individuality is, so to say, 

 striven after, but never attained; in the lower ani- 

 mals it is striven after with greater though incom- 

 plete success ; it is realized only in animals of so high 

 a rank that vegetative multiplication or offshoots are 

 out of the question, where all parts are strictly mem- 

 bers and nothing else, and all subordinated to a com- 

 mon nervous centre — is fully realized only in a con- 

 scious person. 



So, also, the broad distinction between reproduc- 

 tion by seeds or ova and propagation by buds, though 



