i 4 CREATIVE EVOLUTION 



interaction of antagonistic tendencies is always implied ? 

 In particular, it may be said of individuality that, while 

 the tendency to individuate is everywhere present in 

 the organized world, it is everywhere opposed by the 

 tendency towards reproduction. For the individuality 

 to be perfect, it would be necessary that no detached 

 part of the organism could live separately. But then 

 reproduction would be impossible. For what is repro 

 duction, but the building up of a new organism with a 

 detached fragment of the old ? Individuality therefore 

 harbours its enemy at home. Its very need of per 

 petuating itself in time condemns it never to be complete 

 in space. The biologist must take due account of both 

 tendencies in every instance, and it is therefore useless 

 to ask him for a definition of individuality that shall fit 

 all cases and work automatically. 



But too often one reasons about the things of life 

 in the same way as about the conditions of crude 

 matter. Nowhere is the confusion so evident as in 

 discussions about individuality. We are shown the 

 stumps of a Lumbriculus, each regenerating its head 

 and living thenceforward as an independent individual ; 

 a hydra whose pieces become so many fresh hydras ; 

 a sea-urchin s egg whose fragments develop com 

 plete embryos : where then, we are asked, was the 

 individuality of the egg, the hydra, the worm ? But, 

 because there are several individuals now, it does not 

 follow that there was not a single individual just 

 before. No doubt, when I have seen several drawers 

 fall from a chest, I have no longer the right to say 

 that the article was all of one piece. But the fact is 

 that there can be nothing more in the present of the 

 chest of drawers than there was in its past, and if it is 

 made up of several different pieces now, it was so from 



