i ORGANIZED BODIES 15 



the date of its manufacture. Generally speaking, un 

 organized bodies, which are what we have need of in 

 order that we may act, and on which we have modelled 

 our fashion of thinking, are regulated by this simple 

 law : the present contains nothing more than the past, and 

 what is found in the effect was already in the cause. But 

 suppose that the distinctive feature of the organized body 

 is that it grows and changes without ceasing, as indeed 

 the most superficial observation testifies, there would be 

 nothing astonishing in the fact that it was one in the first 

 instance, and afterwards many. The reproduction of uni 

 cellular organisms consists in just this the living being 

 divides into two halves, of which each is a complete 

 individual. True, in the more complex animals, nature 

 localises in the almost independent sexual cells the 

 power of producing the whole anew. But something 

 of this power may remain diffused in the rest of the 

 organism, as the facts of regeneration prove, and it is 

 conceivable that in certain privileged cases the faculty 

 may persist integrally in a latent condition and manifest 

 itself on the first opportunity. In truth, that I may 

 have the right to speak of individuality, it is not 

 necessary that the organism should be without the 

 power to divide into fragments that are able to live. 

 It is sufficient that it should have presented a certain 

 systematisation of parts before the division, and that 

 the same systematisation tend to be reproduced in each 

 separate portion afterwards. Now, that is precisely 

 what we observe in the organic world. We may con 

 clude, then, that individuality is never perfect, and that 

 it is often difficult, sometimes impossible, to tell what is 

 an individual and what is not, but that life nevertheless 

 manifests a search for individuality, as if it strove to 

 constitute systems naturally isolated, naturally closed, 



